Although his measures were very harsh he was seeing results, he had impaled between 30,000 and 100,000 people. These tactics helped make Wallachia a strong and independent state. The tactics also helped the state develop commerce, helped reduce lawlessness, and also strengthened his army; all of this came at high price of great pain and the loss of human life. One legend has it that he once dined among a forest of defeated enemies who were rotting, impaled on poles and that he would dip hid bread in the blood of his victims, these legends would strike terror into everyone who heard them which helped make Vlad a ruler that many didn't want to encounter (Florseu 50). In 1459, when diplomats came to visit, they declined removing their hats due to religious reasons. Vlad then commended them on the devotion to their religion and to ensure they would never take of their hats again he had the hats nailed to the diplomats skulls. During one of his successful military campaigns against the Ottomans Vlad wrote:.
"I have killed peasants, men and women, old and young, who lived.
At Oblucitza and Novoselo, where the Danube flows into the sea.
We killed 23,884 Turks, without counting those whom we burned in .
Homes or the Turks whose heads were cut by our soldiers".
In 1462 Vlad started to have some problems with the Turks. He had refused to pay money and young Wallachian boys for the sultan's army; he began to launch full scale attacks along the Danube River. Transylvania was the only thing that stood in-between the forces of Islam and the rest of Christian Europe. It is unsure how seriously he took in his role of defender of Christianity, but the hatred he had towards the Turks is unquestionable. .
Vlad's forces were extremely outnumbered, though through his use of .
Guerilla warfare Vlad had achieved many victories against the Turks. Sultan .
Mehmed II wanted to punish Vlad for his rebellion so he invaded Wallachia.