The location of his death is unknown
Vlad was compelled into exile and imprisoned in Hungary, several years after the horrific impalement of Ottoman prisoners of war. He came again in 1476 to retake control of Wallachia, but his victory was fleeting. He cut off the Turkish prisoners' limbs, put their pieces on stakes, and showed their privates so that the Turks would flee in terror when they saw them. As the terror tactics were successful, Tepes was once more drawing on his understanding of the Ottoman character that he had acquired during his adolescent years at the court of Murad II. This understanding had not altered much throughout Tepes' 12-year incarceration. Tepes was once more hailed as a hero of the Christian uprising against Ottoman rule.
Tepes became vulnerable to attack when his massive army fled Wallachia and was powerless to defend himself. Wallachia was eventually conquered, and Tepes was slain there in January 1477.
His death's exact circumstances remain unknown. When Basarab Laiota's soldiers attacked the voivode's little army outside Snagov Monastery, a Turkish soldier posing as a servant broke into Tepes' court and stabbed him in the back, according to the Austrian writer Jacob Unrest. According to a Russian story, Tepes was posing as a Turk when his troops mistook him for an enemy. All we know is that he perished in battle, facing an army twice his size and that his narrow-minded supporters gravely let him down by leaving him defenseless. His remains were never discovered.
