Countess Dracula
Was Elizabeth Báthory the serial killer folk tales have made her?
s the cold midwinter of 1610 seeped through the stone of Čachtice Castle in Hungary, screams could be heard coming from within. The 50-year-old widow, Countess Elizabeth Báthory, was indulging in some entertainment. At her feet lay a young serving girl who was being burned with red-hot irons. She would not survive.
The countess, who would come to be known as the most prolific female killer in history, seems to have found pleasure in inflicting pain and misery on her servants, serfs and anyone who crossed her. Over the years, these tales of torture grew so monstrous that she was thought to have bathed in the blood of virgins, a pastime that granted her eternal youth. Like the fictional character Dracula, with whom she is often compared, she is seen as a monster and someone who inflicted pain on others for personal pleasure. Over centuries of folklore and embellishment, fact and fiction has become muddled, with the number of her victims cited as high as 650.
The Kingdom of Hungary, where Báthory hailed from, looked much different in the late-16th and early-17th centuries than it does now. The southern half was claimed by the Ottoman Empire and offered them a potential gateway into Europe. Opposing this in the north were the various wealthy nobles who, in spite of perceived religious intolerance, were as distrustful of each other as they were of the Turks.
Elizabeth, as she is known by her anglicised name, was born to Baron Thurzó Báthory and Baroness Anna
Báthory. Although they hailed from two separate branches of the family – Thurzó from the Ecsed and Anna from the Somlyó – their lineage can be traced back to nobles who aided Vlad the Impaler in his attempts to seize the Wallachian throne. An ominous connection. As her father was a Voivode of Transylvania, it gave him exclusive administrative, judicial and military powers within that subset of the Kingdom of Hungary.
This means that as soon as
Báthory was born, she already had an advantage over a significant portion of the Hungarian population. As part of the landed elite, she was schooled in Latin,
German and Greek, and her family’s wealth meant that she would not want for anything in her early life.
Her wedding to Ferenc Nádasdy, whose family – like the Báthorys – was one of the more wealthy families in Hungary, was attended by over 4,500 guests. They were betrothed when she was around 11, but she was rumoured to have carried a peasant’s love child a few years later. A report tells of the child being ripped apart by dogs. As with many aspects of Báthory’s life, the truth is hard to pin down. As the social standing of her family was above her husband’s coming into the marriage, she had refused to change her last name, remaining a Báthory. Her independence is clearly spelt out in a letter she wrote to Lord Bánffy, a fellow Hungarian noble: “I know well, Lord Bánffy, that this is only the new poverty, that you would be watching my small estate and do this… but yet know you this, that I will not allow myself to be dominated by men for long.”
Báthory’s early life gives no indication to the horrible accusations that would find her in later life. The couple had five or six children, depending on which records can be trusted, although some did not make it past infancy. Her husband fought in the Ottoman-hungarian wars and it is in his absence that Báthory is thought to have started to indulge in her sadistic tendencies. Tales of flagellation, branding irons and sewing one unfortunate girl’s mouth shut because she talked too much would all be rumours that abounded while Nádasdy was absent.
This life was not to last, however, as Nádasdy fell ill to a mysterious malady and died in 1604. This sudden death meant that Báthory found herself the owner of a string of estates that stretched over all of greater Hungary in places like Vienna, Beckov and Nyírbátor. Properties like Čachtice Castle, situated in the Carpathian Mountains, and the surrounding villages is where she would choose to make her home, both during and after her husband’s lifetime. These lands gave her already-great wealth such a boost that she became the richest, most powerful and desirable countess in the land.
With the death of her husband, Báthory surrounded herself with courtiers and servants, who would later be accused of the same crimes as their mistress. They were made up of older women and a crippled boy. These women, Anna, Ilona Jó, Dorottya, Katalin, and the boy Ficzkó, were an assortment of wet nurses, washerwomen and friends. Certainly not a stereotypical band of torturers.
It's from their testimonies that we learn of some of Báthory’s wilder behaviour, like biting chunks of flesh out of women, sometimes without even leaving the comfort of her bed. There was also talk that Báthory beat her servants with cudgels, whips, needles and red-hot irons. The abuse was not always so active, however, as some girls were doused with cold water and left outside to freeze to death. These unfortunate victims seem to have been predominantly castle servants, but also consisted of young, gentrified girls who
While some reports link her with the deaths of 650 young women, Báthory was only officially charged with 80 murders
were sent to the Báthory estate to learn courtly etiquette.
Without the steady stream of plunder from her husband’s military campaigns, the Báthory estate was beginning to run low on funds. The king owed an enormous debt to her late husband, and Báthory made frequent trips to the royal treasury, attempting to have this coin repaid.
Her sadistic behaviour was said to have gone on until 1610, when the bloody accusations could no longer be ignored. It was decided that the palatine of Hungary, Count György Thurzó, would investigate these disturbances. A palatine was a highlevel official in the kingdom, a remnant of the bygone Roman era, and was second only to the king in power. Thurzó, with his military background and political experience, was seen as the perfect man for the job.
Arriving at Báthory’s estate, he claims in his personal account to have found the dead body of a young woman, and another whose mortal wounds were plainly caused by torture. More women were also found imprisoned and seemed to be waiting to meet the same fate. He wrote in a letter: “When my men entered Csejthe Manor, they found a girl dead in the house; another followed in death as a result of many wounds and agonies. In addition to this, there was also a wounded and tortured woman there; the other victims were kept hidden away…”
Thurzó did not catch Báthory in the act of torturing these women, it was a later embellishment to the story. What Thurzó does provide is an eyewitness account of Báthory seemingly engaged in the torture and murder of servant girls at her own home. It’s not quite bathing in virgins' blood, but damning nonetheless.
Báthory and her accomplices were then arrested and officials began their investigation. Under torture, her accomplices admitted that they were complicit in a number of atrocities committed over the years, and other witnesses spoke of seeing seemingly hundreds of young women tortured and killed. Her servant, Ilona Jó, gave this account: “She pricked the girls through their fingers with pins and said, ‘If it hurts the whore, then she can pull it out.’ If she did so, the Lady would beat her again and cut off the finger.”
With the necessary information extracted, her accomplices were executed a week later. Another witness testimony brought Báthory’s crimes to the attention of the court: “The second witness was the honourable Tamás Jaworka, judge of the City of Kosztolány, about 40 years old, sworn and interrogated; he spoke of the
Báthory died at the age of 54 after spending four years in solitary confinement in Čachtice Castle
cruelty of the woman Elizabeth Báthory… and said, in addition, that he had heard from some young servants of the said Lady… how extremely cruel this woman was with her maids; namely, that she burned some of them on the abdomen with a red-hot iron; others she seated in a large, earthen tank and poured boiling water over them and scalded the skin, in this way causing them to suffer; the same witness had also frequently seen the appearances of the virgins in her retinue disfigured and covered with blue spots from numerous blows…”
Báthory was never able to defend herself or her actions, being forbidden to represent herself in trial. Thurzó used his connections with the king to impose perpetuis carceribus (life imprisonment) rather than the death penalty. And so Báthory was condemned to live the rest of her life imprisoned in her own castle, bricked up in a room with a sliver of space to have food passed through and to allow airflow. Her lands and wealth were stripped from her and divided up among her relatives.
In this way she would die alone four years later. Her last recorded words were her telling her guard: “Look, how cold my hands are.” The reply being: “It’s nothing, mistress.
Just go and lie down.” She was found dead in the morning and buried nearby, to the outrage of the villagers, who rioted. Her body was then moved to the Báthory family crypt but has since disappeared and to this day it's not known where her remains lie.
By all accounts, the life of Báthory was one of a sadist; someone who enjoyed inflicting pain and suffering on her fellow Hungarians. There is some evidence, however, that could show her in a different light; one that paints her as a victim of political manoeuvring and slander on a massive scale.
By a happy coincidence (for them), or by more sinister connections, many of the countess’s relatives who received new lands had close ties with Thurzó, as did many of the witnesses at Bathory’s trial. This meant that these people had something to gain from the condemnation and imprisonment of her. Naturally, suspicion should be shown to these figures and their accounts in order to view Báthory’s actions fairly.
The confessions from her accomplices were gained under torture, a method that is suspect and often thought of as inadmissible in a modern-day court. This, coupled with Báthory’s lack of trial and
Báthory’s killing spree is thought to have taken place over a period of almost 20 years between 1590 and 1609
personal defence, has left large gaps in our knowledge of the situation, and in these gaps, myths have sprouted and taken hold. With the main evidence levelled against Báthory coming from these confessions and independent witness testimonies, there are some who believe that Báthory was the victim of a conspiracy. This is certainly a possibility, as the removal of a powerful local rival would suit the aims of Thurzó, who would also gain credit for stopping a ‘monster’. The extended Báthory family also stood to gain many benefits from the lands that they would to inherit. Báthory’s lucrative land holdings would have been seized by the crown, not passed to her relatives, if she had been tried and convicted. It is also very convenient that with the condemnation of Báthory, the Hungarian king would be free of his large debts to her estates.
Premature deaths and the beating of servants was a grisly part of daily life in this period, and this could have been used to pin non-existent crimes on Báthory. Some ideas go even further, stating that many of the ‘torture’ devices used were actually healing instruments, that when she was accused of burning servants with red hot irons she was not doing it for pleasure but as a way of staunching a bleeding wound, trying to save lives rather than take them. The wounds left behind by such drastic actions could be perceived as torture wounds if the context was unknown; taking Thurzó’s surprise visit as an example. These arguments are plausible, although Thurzó did not initiate the investigation on his own, but was ordered to by the authority of the king. The king had received complaints by Magyari, a local Lutheran minister, who was concerned about the activity within Báthory’s estate. It is also known that Thurzó did not go to the estate with the sole intention of arresting her, and seems to have been genuinely attempting to find out the truth. He may have believed that the rumours were spread by Báthory’s cousins in an attempt to destabilise the region and make a power play for the crown. Whatever the truth, in the eyes of the nobles, the perpetrators of these terrible crimes had met their ultimate fate and the case was closed. With more than 300 witness testimonies and eyewitness accounts from some of her closest advisors, it's hard to believe that there's not a kernel of truth in the stories.
The question becomes: how much is to be believed and were other factors at play than simple justice? The figure of 650 victims seems high, and it's generally agreed that the actual number was much lower. Whatever the truth, the fact remains that Elizabeth Báthory’s story has become one of the most infamous ever told.
Čachtice Castle is now part of modern-day Slovakia, and is located close to the border with the Czech Republic