Vlad The Impaler Analysis

His power was threatened, but he knew how to preserve it. With some subterfuge he convinced all of his enemies to attend his banquet. Acting as the perfect host, he served his guests. Then he annihilated them. Death alone was not enough: he needed his wrath to be known; he gently laid his enemies upon their stomachs, their arms bound behind them, and used a mallet to thrust a blunt stake through the length of their bodies, making certain that it did not puncture any vital organs. He sneered as they writhed in anguish; it would be hours before they died. Their corpses would remain as macabre trophies, their flesh ripped by animals, until their putrid stench was no longer tolerable. The story of Vlad the Impaler is a gruesome exhibition of the abuse of power, nauseating enough to make a stomach of steel buckle in horror. Yet, often times when granted power, the people who turned away from Vlad’s tale in disgust will exploit it. Why is it that power coaxes people to cruelty as a siren lures sailors toward menacing crags? Perhaps the best way to understand why power is frequently abused is to systematically analyze disparate instances of tyranny via the comparative method. …show more content…
Maybe Thomas Hobbes was correct in postulating that mankind tends toward savagery. Ivan the Terrible would certainly reinforce this hypothesis since he used his position of authority to graduate from torturing small animals to brutalizing humans for entertainment. However, upon further examination, this hypothesis fails to account for rulers like Robespierre who advocated egalitarianism and opposed the death penalty but became a little guillotine happy once he assumed power. His intentions were pure, but power corrupted