Most of them became dead drunk. As they became unable to communicate with one another, and became incoherent, they were suddenly faced with fire and smoke on all sides. The prince had ordered his servants to set the house on fire. They rushed to the doors to get out, but the doors were locked. The fire progressed. The blaze rose high like inflamed dragons. Shouts, shrieks, and moans arose from the lips of all the poor enclosed there. But why should a fire be moved by the entreaties of men? They fell upon each other. They embraced each other. They sought help, but there was no human ear left to listen to them. They began to twist in the torments of the fire that was destroying them. The fire stifled some, the embers reduced others to ashes. The flames grilled most of them. When the fire finally abated, there was no trace of any living soul. .
On this incident, Dracula's own words have survived in the collective memory of the Romanian people: "These men live off the sweat of others, so they are useless to humanity. It is a form of thievery. In fact, the masked robber in the forest demands your purse, but if you are quicker with your hand and more vigorous than he you can escape from him. However, these vagabonds take your belongings gradually by begging-but they still take it. They are worse than robbers. May such men be eradicated from my land!" .
All this brutality was merely a luxury brought on by Dracula's continuing onslaught against the Turks. Many of these aspects were utilized as part of Dracula's main attempt to frighten and provoke the Turks. And frighten them he did, as a result of Dracula's ruthless campaigning against the Turkish invasions, he must have tortured and eliminated some 40,000 of his enemies in his years of reign before 1462. Now these were not necessarily his personal enemies but any enemy of Christianity Dracula considered his own enemy. However, Dracula was even documented to have tortured his own countrymen possibly out of anger from their opposition to his heinous acts.