Forest of the Impaled: Vlad III and Târgoviște, 1462

experimentNo. 0094categoryHistory & trainingrecordingpendingdataCC BY 4.0

The fly is impaled beside the road among up to 2,200 stakes as Mehmed II's army reaches the field of impaled prisoners reported near Târgoviște in June 1462, during the Ottoman campaign against Vlad III in Wallachia. A continuous pull-back then turns the field into a museum entomology drawer in which the fly is pinned and labelled.

What the fly saw

Frames rendered from the fly’s eye camera at four points in the timeline, each with the 32-column retinal input the connectome model receives at that moment.

Timeline

11 steps, with their times in the experiment

1. 0:00
   Dusk outside Târgoviște

   Low sun over a plain of sharpened stakes. The fly is on one of them beside the road, among thousands of others. Crows circle.

2. 0:12
   The Ottoman column

   Horsetail standards appear on the road from the south: janissaries in white felt caps, spearmen and cavalry, marching toward the field.

3. 0:26
   Into the forest of stakes

   The vanguard enters the field. The soldiers slow down and look up at the stakes on both sides of the road; some raise their forelegs to their faces.

4. 0:40
   The fly on its stake

   Close on the fly: the point has come out at the top of the thorax. It slips a little further down the wood, and blood runs down the stake.

5. 0:52
   About twenty thousand

   The camera rises over the field. Chalkokondyles reported about 20,000 impaled across an area some 17 stades long and 7 wide; the figure is one chronicler’s and probably inflated.

6. 1:02
   The dragon banner

   A tattered dragon banner flaps on a tall pole in the middle of the field. The crows burst up from the stakes.

7. 1:12
   The sultan halts

   Mehmed II rides up on a white horse, stops below the fly’s stake and looks up. The column halts behind him.

8. 1:24
   Night falls

   Torches are lit along the halted column. The stakes become black silhouettes against the last light.

9. 1:34
   Pull back

   The camera pulls away into the sky. The stakes thin into steel pins, the bodies straighten into neat rows, the mud turns to white foam, and the plain becomes a drawer.

10. 1:50
    The drawer

    A museum entomology drawer: rows of pinned flies on white foam behind glass. Specimen 237 is pinned through the right side of its thorax, as flies are mounted.

11. 2:02
    The label

    Close on the pin: beneath the fly, a locality label reads WALLACHIA, Târgoviște, June 1462, and a determination label gives its species.

Setup

• 11 seekable stages over 132 seconds: dusk outside Târgoviște; the Ottoman column; into the forest of stakes; the fly on its stake; about twenty thousand; the dragon banner; the sultan halts; night falls; pull back; the drawer; and the label.
• Scale is about ×480 (the fly is about 1.3 m), so the field of about 230 × 200 m matches a 48 × 42 cm drawer and a 38 mm insect pin is about 18 m long. Stakes (400–2,200, default 2,200, nearest first) sets the number of instanced stakes, each carrying an impaled fly, and the drawer fills only with the stakes shown.
• An instanced Ottoman column comes up the road from the south: janissaries four abreast in white felt caps and kaftans with spears, three horsetail standards (tuğ) and six cavalry riders. Mehmed II, an articulated cast fly in red robes and a great turban, rides out on a white horse and stops below the fly's stake. Crows circle, and one pecks at the fly.
• In the pull-back the stakes become black-headed steel pins, each body swings level onto its pin with a label beneath, the mud turns to white foam with unit-tray lines, and mahogany walls, a specimen cabinet, a lamp and a glass lid appear. The fly ends pinned through the right side of its thorax above the locality label “the fly / ROMANIA: Wallachia / nr. Târgoviște / VI.1462” and the determination label “Drosophila melanogaster Meigen, 1830 / det. ROOM 237”.
• Crows (on by default) is a control. Gore (Low / Standard / Extreme, default Extreme) and blood tone (cinematic red or fly hemolymph) are scene controls, and the eye camera sees the splatter. There are 8 cameras, including the field at dusk, the tracking pull-back from stake to drawer, the fly on its stake, the road, the drawer from above, the specimen label and the fly's eye.

Measurement

• Retinal-only input: the eye camera's 32 luminance columns reach the fixed connectome model, measured spikes drive the neural display, and no direct stimulation is sent.
• The eye sits at the front of the head, clear of the stake that exits behind it. It looks down the road at the approaching column, and later across the drawer at the neighbouring specimens. The exit wound, on the fly's own body, is excluded from the eye image.
• The column, the crows, the fly's slip down its stake and the change into a drawer follow a pre-programmed timeline; measured spikes do not move the fly.

Limitations

• Laonikos Chalkokondyles reports about 20,000 impaled over roughly 17 by 7 stades. That is one chronicle's figure and is likely exaggerated, and the field shown is far smaller.
• The army's composition and dress are generic period approximations, and the sultan riding up to the fly's stake is not documented in the cited sources.
• The dragon banner is a stylized design. The Order of the Dragon emblem is associated with Vlad III's father, Vlad II Dracul, and no documented battle banner is reproduced.
• The entomology-drawer ending is not documented in the cited sources. The mounting follows normal practice for pinned flies at the scene's scale, but a fly as small as Drosophila would usually be point-mounted, or double-mounted on a minuten pin, rather than pinned directly.

Sources

• Laonikos Chalkokondyles, Historiarum libri decem, Bonn edition (1843) (Internet Archive)