Elizabeth Báthory
The sixteenth-century Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory has gone down in history as the most prolific serial killer of all time, and some believe that she, alongside Vlad the Impaler and others, were inspiration behind Bram Stocker’s Dracula. Báthory was accused of sexually abusing, torturing, and murdering up to 600 victims at her remote castle, all of them young girls and women, some of them virgins. There were eyewitness accounts of her mutilating the girls’ genitals, and biting the flesh off their arms, legs, and faces. Legend has it that she also bathed in her victims’ blood, in the belief that it would rejuvenate her, but whether or not this is actually true remains a matter of conjecture. Some historians have also argued that the number of her victims was exaggerated. But whatever the exact details of the case, it is clear that Báthory was a monstrously evil madwoman, whose sadistic treatment of her unfortunate maids went far beyond the callous cruelty towards servants considered acceptable by the nobility at the time.
Madness and incest
Erzsébet Báthory, to give her Hungarian name, was born in 1560 in Nyirbator, Hungary. Her parents were related. Her father, George Báthory came from the Ecsed line of the Báthory family, while her mother, Anna, came from the Somlyo branch. The Báthorys were a powerful Protestant aristocratic family, whose members included princes, warlords, churchmen, and politicians. One of Elizabeth’s cousins was the King of Poland, and another went on to become Palatine of Hungary. In order to preserve the purity of their heritage, the Báthory family encouraged intermarriage. This may have contributed to Elizabeth’s insanity, which showed itself during her childhood in epileptic fits and uncontrollable rages. Her brother Stephan was also apparently afflicted by mental imbalance, and grew up to be an alcoholic and a notorious sex fiend.
Horrifying punishments
As well as this poor genetic inheritance, the young Elizabeth’s sanity may have been affected by witnessing her privileged family’s extreme cruelty towards the ordinary people around them. The Hungarian nobility of the time treated their inferiors like animals and worse, and horrific retribution was meted out to anyone who crossed them. In one instance, Elizabeth witnessed the punishment of a gypsy who had been accused of theft. He was sewn into the belly of a horse, with only his head protruding, and left there to die. With such perverse acts of barbarism going on around her, it was hardly surprising that the young Elizabeth came to regard sadistic treatment of her servants as a normal way of life when she grew up.
There were, however, more positive aspects to Elizabeth’s experience of childhood. Unlike most other Hungarian aristocrats, some of whom could barely read or write, she received a proper education in Latin and Greek. She was said to have been highly intelligent, and her beauty was also praised.
Unwanted pregnancy
While still a child, she was betrothed to Count Ferenc Nàdasdy, a grown man who was renowned as a soldier and athlete. But then, at the age of 14, she became pregnant by one of the peasants on her father’s estate. Elizabeth was sent away to live in the countryside and went on to give birth to a daughter. The child was left with a peasant couple and Elizabeth returned to public life.
A year later, Elizabeth married Nàdasdy in tremendous style. The Báthorys threw a huge, lavish wedding party with a guest list of 4,500 people. The Holy Roman Emperor himself, Maximillian II, was invited, although he could not attend, citing ‘the dangers of travelling in turbulent times’ as an excuse. Instead, he sent a large delegation and expensive gifts. The event did much to further the prestige and political power of the Báthory family. What happened subsequently, however, did not.
Satanic rituals
Elizabeth moved with her new husband to the Nàdasdy estates around Castle Sàrvàr. Here the Nàdasdys had long held a reputation as cruel overlords, and Ferenc was no exception. He introduced his young wife, still an impressionable teenager, to various cruel ways of punishing their servants, encouraging her to treat them without pity or mercy. There were also rumours that the couple became involved in the occult, calling in black arts practitioners, and performing satanic rituals together.
When Ferenc left home to pursue his studies and his career as a soldier, Elizabeth was left on her own. To while away the time, she travelled between her various castles and took several lovers, even at one stage eloping with one of them, before meekly returning to her husband. She also visited relatives, but in the Báthory-Nàdasdy family, this was no respectable round of dull social events. As she soon found out, many of her family members were as sexually voracious as she was. In particular, she struck up a friendship with an aunt who was openly bisexual, and who had many lovers. All this seems to have been tolerated by her husband, and by Hungarian society in general. By all accounts, the Hungarian nobility wielded such power at this period that nobody dared to comment on their decadent way of life, a factor that again encouraged the young Elizabeth to indulge her perversions to the full.
Sadistic wetnurse
Oddly enough, given this hectic sexual activity, Elizabeth found time to bear her husband three daughters and a son. Even more strange, by all accounts she was a kind, affectionate mother, and made sure that her children were well cared for. However, one of her wetnurses, Ilona Jó, later proved to be an accomplice in her crimes, as did several other servants in her entourage. It is yet another contradiction in this bizarre tale that these servants, who were so devoted to the care of young children, should have shown such barbarity in their behaviour towards others.
While her husband was away, Elizabeth took to staying in one of the family’s more remote properties, the Cachtice Castle, which had been given to her as a wedding gift from her husband. Here, she used her considerable skills to run the family’s business affairs, in some cases providing help and assistance to destitute peasant families. By now her husband was the chief commander of the Hungarian troops, and was engaged full time in fighting the ongoing war against the Ottomans. Elizabeth was charged with the job of defending the estates against incursions by Ottoman troops; the estates and castles were in strategic positions, including the route to Vienna and the Hungarian border.
Frozen to death
Despite her busy workload, Elizabeth had begun to amuse herself with a pastime that would eventually lead to her downfall: torturing her servant girls. She especially liked to beat them with a barbed lash, or cudgel, and then have them dragged naked into the snow. Cold water would then be thrown on them so that they froze to death. She was helped in this gruesome enterprise by three rather sinister figures: Ilona Jó, her wetnurse; a large, imposing local woman called Dorothea Szentes, known as Dorka, who was reputed to be a witch; and a crippled dwarf, Johannes Ujvary, nicknamed Ficzko.
In 1604, Elizabeth’s husband Ferenc died, ostensibly from an injury sustained in battle, although there were rumours that he had been attacked by a whore after refusing to pay her for her services. After his death, Elizabeth made Cachtice her permanent home – unfortunately for the local population, as it turned out. There, she took up with a woman named Anna Darvula, who became her lover. Like Szentes, Darvula was feared as a witch. It later emerged that Darvula was the most sadistic of Báthory’s entourage, and that under her tutelage, Báthory became more savage than ever.
Young noblewomen
There was no shortage of young women willing to work at the castle: times were hard for the Hungarian peasantry, and Elizabeth promised high wages for her young female staff. It was only when the maidservants disappeared that rumours began to spread, and the eagerness of the local peasant girls to work for Countess Báthory suddenly abated. Not only this, but at around the same time, in 1609, Elizabeth’s lover, Darvula died.
Elizabeth immediately found a new lover, the widow of one of her tenant farmers, Erszi Majorova, who helped her to solve the problem of how to find victims. At Erszi’s suggestion, the Countess took to inviting the daughters of minor local noblemen to stay at the castle, and meting out the same treatment to them. When the girls did not return home, the alarm was raised. Had the Countess continued to torture and murder peasant girls only, her crimes might never have been discovered; it was only when she lost her head and began to prey on the nobility that her reign of terror was discovered.
Family scandal
Under pressure from the fathers of these young women, most of whom were not wealthy but were highly born, the Lord Palatine of Hungary, Count Thurzo, was forced to act. He already knew about the atrocities, having received complaints from a Lutheran minister, Istvan Magyari, but had ignored them, because the Countess was his cousin, and he did not want to have a family scandal on his hands.
Before visiting the scene of the crime, Thurzo consulted with King Matthias of Hungary and Báthory’s son and sons-in-law. They agreed that whatever the Countess had done, there should be no public trial. Instead, she would be kept under house arrest and her minions publicly tried in her place.
Walled up
On 30 December 1610, Thurzo went to Cachtice Castle to pay a call on Countess Báthory. There, he and his men found a girl dead in the grounds, and one dying in the hall. Further investigation of the castle dungeons revealed other prisoners awaiting torture. Some were starving, some were very sick, and others were dying. Báthory was arrested, along with four of her accomplices. The Countess was put under house arrest, while the others were taken away for trial.
King Matthias is said to have ordered Báthory’s execution at this point, but Thurzo argued that such an act would be bad publicity for the nobility, and so instead, the Countess was walled up in a set of rooms within the castle. Here, she remained for the rest of her days, her only access to the outside world being a small vent for air, and a hatch where food was passed through to her.
Biting flesh
The defendants at the trial included the ‘witch’ Szentes, the wetnurse Ilona Jó, the dwarf Ujvary, and a washerwoman named Katarina Benicka. Their punishments were every bit as gruesome as their crimes. Szentes and Ilona Jó had their fingernails ripped out with red-hot pincers before being thrown into a firepit, while Ujvary was beheaded and his body burned. Later, Majarova was arrested and executed. Only Benicka escaped death, instead being sentenced to life imprisonment, after witnesses testified that she had only acted under pressure from the others.
During the trial, the true extent of the Countess’s sadistic crimes emerged as one witness after another testified against her. In one instance, a 12-year-old girl who had tried to escape from the castle was put into a cage studded with spikes. Ujvary then rolled the cage from side to side and the girl’s flesh was torn to shreds. In another episode, the Countess forced several naked girls to lie on the floor of her bedroom, and tortured each of them so cruelly that the other servants had to scoop up the blood using buckets. The Countess later recorded that one of her victims had been so small and weak that, much to her disappointment, she had died quickly.
During the trial, it transpired that Báthory was partial to burning and mutilating her victims’ hands, faces, and genitals. She also enjoyed starving them, and watching them freeze to death. Apparently, even when she was ill, she continued her vile perversions. Once, when sick in bed, she commanded Szentes to bring her a maidservant. Szentes did as she was told, holding the girl by the Countess’ bedside, whereupon the Countess rose up and bit her, like a dog, sinking her teeth first into her cheek, then into her shoulder, then into her breast.
Bathing in blood?
Estimates regarding the number of Báthory’s victims vary greatly. Szentes and Ujvary reported their involvement with 35 young women, other servants with 50 or more. Some servants at Sàrvàr claimed that between 100 and 200 bodies were taken from the castle. It was claimed that the Countess kept a diary in which she listed over 650 victims. This diary is rumoured to have been kept in Hungarian state archives but – if indeed it exists – it has never been published.
Today, there continue to be many unanswered questions concerning the legend of the ‘Blood Countess’. No one knows exactly how many young girls and women met their death at her hands. The rumours about her bathing in the girls’ blood have not been confirmed by historical records. In addition, historians remain divided as to the cause of her behaviour. She may have had a genetic inheritance that caused her fits of rage, but this would not account for the extent of her savagery and perversion. Obviously, the mores of the time, in which the nobility treated the peasantry with extreme cruelty, had more than a little influence on her behaviour, as did the fact that her family were extremely rich, powerful and well-connected, so that she was able to pursue her crimes with impunity. But in the end, the reason for her dreadful cruelty, as with so many serial killers, and perversion remains a mystery.
Countess Elizabeth Báthory was found dead in her rooms on 21 August 1614, lying face down on the floor. A number of plates of food had been left untouched, so it was not clear exactly when her death took place. As one might imagine, there were few, if any, who mourned her passing.