Doog, you are absolutely right, Vlad Tepes (The Empiler) is a national hero in my country (Romania). He was king (voievod) in Vallachia (in that period the actual Romania was split in three: Vallachia, Moldova and Transylvania).
He spent his childhood at Constantinopole (Istambul) as a guarantee that his father will not fight against Turks.
There he learnt a lot of things regarding how the turks fight, their tactics etc. He also "borrow" from the turks the empile (turks were punishing peole with this).
After he became king hes started to fight agains turks (Vallachia was paying tribute to Turks). He beated them several times and his most famous victory is against an army led by Mohamed II (conquerer of Constantinopole, the most important Sultan).
The battle close to Targoviste (capital of Vallachia in that period) is known as "The Night Attack" a very interesting and fascinating one. Vlad (who knew perfect Turkish) dressed himself and other 7,000 soldiers in Turks and attacked during the night the Turks camp. The Turks had 200,000 soldiers, but he knew that Turks do not fight during the night. He created a lot of panic there giving such orders to the Turks that he put them to fight each other. His target was Mohamed II, he reached his tent, but the Sultan had the great luck of not sleeping in his tent in that night. Lucky him and bad luck for Europe, the Turks developing a lot under the ruling of Mahomed, becoming the most important power and starting to attack and other European countries in the next years.
This "Night Attack" was a real huge commando mission, having all the features of such a mission, just that it was carried out in the fifteen century.
Vlad Tepes retreated in Hungary for finding support. He was betrayed and he was imprisoned by Matei Crvin (Huniade, the most important king of Hungary, also of Romanian Origin-his father was Iancu of Huniade, king of Trasnylvania and realtive with Vlad Tepes father).
He was imprisoned for 15 years and after that he was released and became king of Vallahia again. Matei Corvin released him to go to fight against Turks, Hungary was in real danger, and because of Matei stupidity and vanity (Vlad Tpes victories agaisnt Turks were highly appreciated by the foreign powers) Hungary became in less than 100 years a Turkish province after they lost the battle at Mochacy.
The stories about Vlad cruelty were illustrated inside a book, Slavone Stories which appeared as a justification of his unfair inprisonment. most of them are exagerations and stupidities...fearturing Tepes eating in front of choped humans, etc. This book inspired the character "Dracula", as well as the Bran castle (Vlad Tepes spent just one night in this castle, it is not the one built by him). He built a castle on the top of a mountain, but the castle is just a ruin now. Its name is Poienari. It is a rumour that he built that castle only with treator lords, he put them to built it...
In fact, all other countries that fought with turks in that period lost the battles. The Western countries did not know to fight with Turks, they had knights with heavy armours and other strategies. Turks were very light and they could move and destroy quickly the knights, so they almost all the time won. Their only problem were the Romanian countries, our soldiers were also light and we knew very good how the Turks fought, that's why we succeded to beat them so many times and with so little soldiers. In additio, our kings were amaising strategs and if look on statistics, you will see that at each battle the percent was 1 Romanian soldier to 10 or more Turkish soldier. In spite of this, they succeded to beat them in the most important moments of development of the Turkish Empire.
For this reason, the Romanian countries were the only countries in the area that were never Turkish provinces. Grece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Albania were Turkish provinces.
So, we defend a lot the Western countries, but we have never been appreciated for this...we did not have time to build impressive palaces and other buildings, because we had a war each year...Except Turks, in that period we were also attacked by Poland and Hungary, other important powers that want our countries...latter came the Habsburg Empire and Russians...
Sorry about this short intro in the Romanian history, but this very nice Vlad Tepes (Dracula) figure gave me a good opportunity to show off a little with our history full of battles....
By the way, Tepes punished with the empile the thieves, enemies and treators. He was very hated by a large part of the lords (boieri), many of them rather making money under the Turks than fighting against them. He was betrayed by them and during his second rule, he was killed by them.
And the last thing, my son's name is Vlad, inspired by this great king....