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Elizabeth Báthory (Báthory Erzsébet in Hungarian, Alžbeta Bátoriová(-Nádašdy) in Slovak, August 7?, 1560 – August 21, 1614), the Bloody Lady of Čachtice, was a Hungarian countess that lived in the Čachtice Castle near Trenčín, in present-day Slovakia.

She is considered the most famous serial killer in Slovak and Hungarian history as well as the world's most prolific mass murderer (according to Guinness World Records). She spent most of her life at the Čachtice Castle. She and her alleged four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing numerous girls and young women (20 - 2000 victims, depending on the source). In 1610, she was imprisoned in solitary confinement, where she stayed until her death four years later. Her nobility permitted her to avoid an immediate execution. However, three of her four alleged collaborators were executed.

Various legends about her life, including the idea that she bathed in or drank the blood of servant girls, are thought by some to have been the origin of numerous vampire myths, the Dracula story, and the trope of the sexually sadistic vampiress in particular. Her historical nicknames include "The Blood Countess" and "Countess Dracula".

The Báthory lineage

The ancestors of Elizabeth (the Gutkeled clan) came to the Hungarian Kingdom in the mid-11th century. They held power in what is now Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Transylvania. The Gutkeled clan emerged to assume a role of relative eminence by the early 13th century and the name Báthory (according to one of their estates Báthor Nyírbátor meaning "valiant") was assumed by that sub-family in 1279. Their power peaked during the mid-16th century, and was virtually gone by 1658. With the death of the wife of György Rákóczi II (Zsófia Báthory), they died out in 1680. Elizabeth's parents were from the two branches of the Báthory family (Báthory of Ecsed and Báthory of Somlyó) and the brother of Elizabeth’s mother was the Polish king István Báthory.

Life

She was born in Nyírbátor in present-day Hungary on August 71560 and died on August 21 1614 in Čachtice, present-day Slovakia.

She spent her childhood at the Ecsed Castle; details from this period are unknown. At the age of 11 she was engaged with the noble and successful warrior Ferenc Nádasdy and moved to the Nádasdy Castle in Sárvár. In 1575, she married Nádasdy in Vranov nad Topľou, who in 1578 became the chief commander of Hungarian troops in their war against the Turks. He was considered a very brave, but also very cruel, person. The Turks feared him and called him the Black Beg.

Nádasdy’s wedding gift to Elizabeth was his home, the Čachtice Castle (situated in the Carpathians in present-day western Slovakia near Trenčín, then part of Royal Hungary) together with the Čachtice country-house and seventeen adjacent villages. The castle itself was surrounded by a peasant village and rolling agricultural lands, interspersed with outcroppings of the Carpathian Mountains. In 1602, Elizabeth’s husband definitively bought the castle from Emperor Rudolf II, so that it became a property of the Nádasdys. Since battles with the Turks occupied her husband, Elizabeth became the lady of the castle. At this time she was able to read and write in four languages.

Elizabeth had six children. Two of them died at an early age:

Her husband died in either 1602 or 1604, either from an illness, at the hands of a prostitute or in battle. Another view holds be that he was murdered by general Giorgio Basta, whose reign of terror in Transylvania at that time led to a sharp decline in the Bathory family's power.

It is alleged that Elizabeth started to kill young women between the years 1585 and 1610, and that her husband and her relatives knew about her sadistic inclination, but they did not directly intervene. While her husband lived, she apparently kept her activities to a moderate level, but upon his death any restraints he may have imposed on her (or she on herself) were completely removed. It is said that people living around her castle hated her so much that she only left the castle under an armed escort. However, she did torture some girls at her properties in Sárvár and Keresztúr. Her possible victims were initially local peasant girls, many of whom were lured to Cachtice by offers of well-paid work. However, when stories spread of the countess's inclinations, the supply of new maids began to dwindle. At this point, she may have begun to kill daughters of lower gentry, who were sent to her castle by their parents to learn noble manners; Báthory had allegedly erected a sham school to entice the lower gentry to hand their daughters over to the Countess. In the early 17th century, parents of substantial position often wished their daughters to be educated in the social graces and etiquette. As rumours spread further throughout the Hungarian Kingdom concerning the actions of the Countess, she may have had girls kidnapped both locally and from more distant areas.

After the parish priest of Čachtice and the monks of the relatively nearby Vienna had lodged several complaints with the court in Vienna about cries from the castle, the Emperor Matthias assigned Juraj Thurzo (Hungarian: György Thurzó), the palatine of Hungary, to investigate these complaints. Thurzo and his men invaded Čachtice in the morning of December 29 1610 and caught Elizabeth in the act in the Čachtice country-house; she was torturing several girls - one of them had only just died. She and four collaborators were charged with sadistic torture, as well as mass murder. Despite the overwhelming evidence found by investigators, Elizabeth herself was not brought to trial. Her son Paul and his tutor Megyery raised valid concerns that, apart from the public scandal and family disgrace, by law the family inheritance would go to the crown. While she was investigated in absentia, Elizabeth was kept under tight house arrest and waged a spirited defense by a furious stream of letters. The outcome was inevitable. The bloody countess was bricked up in her own private chamber of her castle, kept alive only by food poked through a slit in the door, and died there on August 21 1614. Further details regarding her collaborators are recorded below.

Guilt or innocence

More than 300 people were interrogated before her death between 1611 and 1614. Despite several interventions by the Hungarian king, a regular trial never took place and the case remained open. The reason for this might have been that the palatine Thurzo did not want a trial against a member of the high gentry (with which he was reproached at the time). Moreover, Elizabeth’s nephew Gabriel Báthory was the ruler of Transylvania and Thurzo did not want to get into trouble. Because her eventual punishment was politically motivated, some have questioned whether she was guilty at all. The evidence against her would not be considered acceptable in most developed countries by today's standards, since it was obtained hastily and in the case of her accomplices, through torture. However, the interrogations did produce some corroborating testimonies, albeit ones that cast doubt on the motives described in legends and fiction about her*.

Motives

Elizabeth was born in a brutal environment in which her family often used violence to maintain their power (e.g. the Transylvanian ruler Zsigmond Báthory who liked to have his retainers killed). Alternatively, inbreeding is sometimes believed to have caused various psychotic disorders that the family was rumored to have. McNally and Radu Florescu imply that she learned techniques of torture from her husband, the "Black Beg." Some writers claim the Bathorys were brutal individuals even for the time, but others accuse such writers of selling fiction at any cost and slandering a family that achieved great things for Hungary*.

Her crimes, arrest, and imprisonment can be seen in the context of a financial wartime power struggle she and her family eventually lost to the Habsburgs. The Bathory family's influence had declined in its base, Transylvania, after their involvement in the Long War with the Turks and subsequent betrayal at the hands of their allies. After her husband's death, the Emperor had refused to pay debts owed to the late "Black Beg". Elizabeth's relative Gabor Bathory (listed as a brother, cousin, or nephew depending on the source) was involved in anti-Habsburg intrigue following the Long War and she was said to have been linked to these activities**.

While she was almost certainly a very ruthless individual, many have cast doubt on the motives of legend. That she was killing the girls in order to bathe in their blood and, thus, stay forever young or improve her complexion was not mentioned at her trial, but lurid legends about her continued even after it was made against the law to speak her name in Hungary. The tortures described in the actual recorded documents of the case are different from the overtly sexual atrocities alleged in sensational fictional stories about her. Her diaries, if they exist, may shed light on her motives but have not been published. They are said to be in Hungary's national archives*.

Collaborators

A shadowy figure named Anna Darvulia, a suspected local witch who dabbled in black magic and satanic ritual, is rumoured to have influenced much of Elizabeth's early sadistic career, but apparently died before the major events of Elizabeth's reign of terror commenced.

Elizabeth's main collaborators after Anna's death were her maids

Except for Katarína, they were all executed at Bytča on January 7 1611.

Katarína's guilt could not be proven, and according to McNally's sources from recorded testimony by all witnesses, she seems to have been dominated and bullied by the other executed women. Two of the women had their extremities hacked off before being thrown onto a blazing fire, while Fickó, whose guilt was deemed the lesser, had the mercy of being beheaded before being consigned to the flames. A public scaffold was erected near the castle to show the public that justice had been done.

The confessions and testimony against Báthory were taken under torture by Thurzo.

Legends

The following are some of the best known legends about Elizabeth Báthory. Although some are partly based on statements made by those interrogated after 1610, their truthfulness cannot be verified.

Bloodbaths

Elizabeth Báthory, described as a beauty by her contemporaries, is rumored to have been exceedingly vain and obsessed with preserving her youth. Legend has it that a servant girl accidentally pulled the countess' hair while arranging it one day, and Báthory slapped her so hard her nose bled. She believed that the servant's blood had made her skin young and fresh again, and so she conceived the idea of bathing in blood as a magical restorative. Her reputation as the "Blood Countess" arose in large part from stories of servants and virgin peasant girls being strung upside down and drained of their blood to provide Báthory with a way to preserve her youth. It is also said that before killing her victims the countess would fondle her victims' genitalia as a way of preparing them for death. This story is one of the most enduring parts of Báthory's legend and appears in most fictional works inspired by it.

McNally, however, did not find anything in his research to suggest that the blood bath legend had any truth in reality and, in fact, concluded that they were just stories created at a later date to try to justify the idea that a woman could be guilty of causing so many deaths. Many men believed that women simply were not capable of violence for its own sake and created, McNally explained, the idea that that vanity was the root cause so that it fit in better with the popular idea of what women are motivated by.

Torture

While interrogating Turks, her husband at one time employed articulated claw-like pincers of silver which, when fastened to a whip, would tear and rip the flesh to such an obscene degree that he soon abandoned the apparatus in disgust and left it at the castle. Báthory's aunt had introduced her to the practice of flagellation, and she equipped herself with her husband's silver claws for use on Slavic debtors and other victims. She preferred to whip her subjects on the front of their nude bodies rather than their backs, so that she could watch their faces contort in horror at their fate.

Báthory used other methods of torture as well, often as punishments for servants who incurred her displeasure. Sticking pins under the fingernails of maids, covering young women in honey and leaving them to be stung to death by bees, or dousing naked victims in cold water during the harshest parts of the winter until they froze to death were among the tortures rumored to have taken place at her castle. She and her servants also beat and starved her victims. Other legends mention Báthory's use of the iron maiden, but this is not in the testimony of the interrogated servants.

Many works of fiction portray the countess as bisexual or lesbian, drawing on the belief that her victims were exclusively women. It is unclear whether her sadism had any sexual component, nor is it confirmed that she only killed women. It should be noted that torture was commonly practiced by both sides of the conflict during the Ottoman wars in Europe, of which Hungary was at the forefront for centuries.

In popular culture

In film

There have been several movies about or inspired by Elizabeth Báthory:

In music

  • The metal band Bathory took its name from the blood countess, and have some songs about her, including "Woman of Dark Desires". Lyrics
  • The black metal band Cradle of Filth has many songs about the countess, and its 1998 album, Cruelty and the Beast, is completely dedicated to Elizabeth.
  • Progressive power metal band Kamelot have a 3 part song on their Karma album about Bathory called "Elizabeth".
  • British black metal band Venom have a song called "Countess Bathory".
  • Hungarian black metal band Tormentor has a song called "Elisabeth Bathory" on their Anno Domini album. Later this song was covered by Swedish Dissection on Where Dead Angels Lie. Lyrics
  • American emo band Boy Sets Fire recorded a song called "Bathory's Sainthood" on their 2003 album, Tomorrow Come Today.
  • The final track of the album "Black One" by experimental doom metal band Sunn O))), titled "Bathory Erzsebet", is in part dedicated to her. The vocal tracks to the song were actually recorded with the band member nailed inside a coffin, to recreate the kind of terror those that Countess Bathory tortured must have felt.

In fiction

  • Báthory is a major character in the alternative history/fantasy novel This Rough Magic by Eric Flint, Dave Freer and Mercedes Lackey.
  • The Blood Countess is a novel by Andrei Codrescu, a Romanian native and descendant of Elizabeth Báthory, currently a professor of writing at Louisiana State University and columnist with NPR.
  • Báthory is an ancestress of Christopher Cséjthe, the protagonist of the "Half/Life" series by Wm Mark Simmons; this blood relationship, merely alluded to in the first book, becomes a major plot point in the second book.
  • In the video game Bloodlines, a character named Elizabeth Bartley, whose history is strikingly similar to Báthory's. Given the idiosyncrasies of phonetic translation between Japanese and other languages, it is likely that this character is indeed Elizabeth Bathory.
  • In the PC game Diablo II, one of the quests in the game is to find the tower belonging to the "Countess," who, in the game, is said to have been buried alive for bathing in the blood of a hundred virgins.
  • In the 2006 movie Stay Alive the name 'Elizabeth Bathory' is used to describe the "witch" inside the game that comes to kill players who have died in the game.
  • In the VCR/DVD boardgame Atmosfear, Elizabeth Bathory is a playable character and is portrayed as a vampiress.

References

External links

1560 births | 1614 deaths | Báthory | Female serial killers | History of Slovakia | Hungarian serial killers

Ержейбeт Батори | Erzsébet Báthory | Ελισάβετ Μπάτορι | Erzsébet Báthory | Erzsébet Báthory | Erzsébet Báthory | Ealasaid Báthory | Erzsébet Báthory | Elizabeth Báthory | אליזבת בתורי | Elisabeth Báthory | バートリ・エルジェーベト | Elżbieta Batory | Erzsébet Báthory | Erzsébet Báthory | Alžbeta Bátoriová | Ержебет Батори | Erzsébet Báthory | Elizabeth Bathory | 伊丽莎白·巴托里

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Elizabeth Báthory".

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