The pressure on Vlad Dracula to maintain civil law in Wallachia was equaled by the continuing threat of the Ottoman Turks. Hungary's nobility raised Matthias Corvinus to the throne of the country in 1458, and one of his primary objectives was to go to war with the Turks.

Dracula's hatred for his former captives knew no bounds, and after hearing of Corvinus's intentions, he assembled an army of about 20,000 and marched across the Danube River toward the Black Sea, where they attacked and pillaged town after town in a months-long campaign of terror. In response, Mehmed II, the new sultan who'd succeeded Murad, raised an enormous force, often estimated to number well over 100,000 men, to crush the Christian assault.

Badly outnumbered, Dracula retreated back to Targoviste employing a “scorched earth” tactic of destroying and burning every village, town, and food supply, and poisoning the water wells along the way — including the communities of his own people.

Fear and Loathing in Transylvania

Dracula retreated to Targoviste with the Ottoman Turks in hot pursuit, but what the Turks found on the outskirts of the city cemented Dracula's reputation for cruel vengeance. According to Greek historian Laonicus Chalkondyles, Mehmed and his troops came upon a field of impaled Turkish prisoners nearly one-half mile wide and two miles long that numbered over 20,000 victims, including women and babies skewered together.

The stunned sultan and his horrified army surveyed the hideous carnage, after which Mehmed exclaimed that he could never conquer the land of a man who would do such things.

With Dracula virtually at their fingertips, the Turks withdrew — but they were hardly finished with the man who had created such a shocking spectacle. Mehmed's response was to leave part of his army under the command of Vlad Dracula's brother, Radu the Handsome.

With the aid of seditious Wallachian boyars and their forces, Radu chased his brother to his remote fortification near the village of Poenari. Under siege and on the run, Vlad made a narrow escape into Transylvania where he was taken prisoner, not by the Turks, but much to his surprise by his former ally, Matthias Corvinus.

As Radu assumed control of Wallachia, it appears that Corvinus had seen the short-term political simplicity of letting it be so. Dracula was stripped of his authority and held captive for two years.

Rebirth and Sudden Death

During Vlad Dracula's incarceration, Radu the Handsome died from syphilis, and the throne of Wallachia was taken by Bassarab the Elder, another vassal of the Ottoman Empire. Dracula himself had gained a level of trust with Matthias Corvinus, and after converting to Catholicism was encouraged to marry into the Corvinus family. With his conversion, Dracula was given command of a contingent of troops in 1475 and went once again to war with the Turks — and to retake the crown of Wallachia.

The following year, Dracula drove Bassarab from the throne and regained the position that he'd struggled to achieve for so many years. In power for only a month, Dracula was again besieged by a new Turkish force led by the deposed Bassarab. In December of 1476, Dracula was finally killed.

Accounts vary as to the circumstances of his death, but it's likely that he was killed in battle near Bucharest. There is documentation that Dracula's head was removed and sent to Istanbul preserved in a jar of honey. There, Mehmed ironically placed Dracula's head on a stake as the final trophy in a long and bitter battle for domination.