1.03 Vlad III
He roasted children, whom he fed to their mothers. And (he) cut off the breasts of women, and forced their husbands to eat them. After that, he had them all impaled.[26]
Vlad Ţepeş's reputation was considerably darker in western Europe than in eastern Europe and Romania. In the West, Vlad III Ţepeş has been characterized as a tyrant who took sadistic pleasure in torturing and killing his enemies.[27] Estimates of the number of his victims range from 40,000 to 100,000.[28] He also had whole villages and fortresses destroyed and burned to the ground.[29]
Impalement was Vlad's preferred method of torture and execution. Several woodcuts from German pamphlets of the late 15th and early 16th centuries show Vlad feasting in a forest of stakes and their grisly burdens outside Brașov, while a nearby executioner cuts apart other victims.[30] It has also been said that in 1462 Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of 20,000 impaled corpses outside Vlad's capital of Târgoviște.[31]