Vlad the Impaler

"In the year of Our Lord 1462 once Dracula came to the large city of Schylta [Nicopolis], where he had more than 25,000 people of all kinds of ethnic groups killed, Christians, pagans, etc. Among them were the most beautiful women and maidens, who had been taken captive by his courtiers. They begged Dracula to give them to them as honorable wives. Dracula did not want to do this and ordered that all of them together with the courtiers should be cut up like cabbage. And that he did because he had become obliged to pay tribute to the Turkish sultan, who had demanded tribute from him. Immediately Dracula let his people know that he wished to give over the tribute personally to the sultan. The people there were overjoyed, so he let his people come to him in large groups one after the other and he let all his courtiers ride with him. And then he had these people all killed. Also he had the same region called Pallgarey [Wulgerey] completely burned. He also had others nailed by their hair and in all there were 25,000 not counting those whom he had burned."

"Who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them! Was it not this Dracula, indeed, who inspired that other of his race who in a later age again and again brought his forces over the great river into Turkey-land; who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph! They said that he thought only of himself. Bah! what good are peasants without a leader? Where ends the war without a brain and heart to conduct it? Again, when, after the battle of Mohács, we threw off the Hungarian yoke, we of the Dracula blood were amongst their leaders, for our spirit would not brook that we were not free. Ah, young sir, the Szekelys—and the Dracula as their heart’s blood, their brains, and their swords—can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach. The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace; and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told."