Elizabeth Báthory

Hungarian countess and murderer

• Born: August 7, 1560
• Birthplace: Ecsed Castle, Translyvania (now in Romania)
• Died: August 21, 1614
• Place of death: Cséjthe Castle, Hungary (now Čachtice Castle, Slovakia)

Elizabeth Báthory, according to legend the most notorious female mass-murderer in European history, reportedly tortured and then killed more than six hundred girls and young women for their blood. Báthory’s life, along with that of Walachian prince Vlad III the Impaler, partly inspired Bram Stoker’s story of Dracula. For many centuries in Hungary, it was forbidden to speak Báthory’s name.

Early Life

Elizabeth Báthory (ih-LIHZ-ah-behth ba-TOHR-ee) was born into the powerful and eccentric Báthory family, which played a leading role in late medieval and early modern Hungary. In 1571, she was betrothed to sixteen-year-old count Ferenc Nadasdy and then lived at his familial castle at Sarvar. Around this time, she was influenced by a sadistic aunt, Karla Báthory, who initiated her into the torture of servant-girls.

The disorderly world in which Báthory lived could lead to criminal psychosis. Since the Ottoman Turkish triumph at Mohács in 1526, the sprawling medieval kingdom of Hungary had been partitioned, and Elizabeth lived almost her entire life in Royal Hungary, the western and northern districts ruled from Pozsony (Bratislava, Slovakia) by the Habsburgs. Border raiding across the Ottoman/Habsburg frontier was endemic. None suffered more from the prevailing instability than the peasants, whom the landowners reduced to total serfdom, exercising powers of life and death over them. It was in this environment that Báthory inflicted brutalities on the daughters of her serfs.

Hungary was also racked by religious strife, and where religious dissent and spiritual deviancy flourished, witchcraft and pre-Christian cults were widespread. Elizabeth seems to have become obsessed by the black arts, and she surrounded herself with witches, who served as her familiars in her sadistic sexual games.

Life’s work

Elizabeth Báthory and Ferenc Nadasdy were married in May of 1575. The Hungarian ruler at the time was King Rudolf II, an eccentric recluse obsessed with alchemy and magic, who established himself in Prague and left his brother, the archduke Matthias, to rule from Vienna and to attend to Hungarian affairs. The Ottoman threat across the border remained a reality, eventually developing into what became known as the Fifteen Years’ War (1591-1606). Nadasdy, a born warrior with an insatiable thirst for glory, was almost on campaign permanently. Meanwhile, Elizabeth stayed at Sarvar, torturing her female servants.

For ten years, Báthory and Nadasdy were childless, but they had a daughter, Anna, around 1585, followed by Ursula and Katharina; in 1598, they had a son, Pal. Elizabeth informed her husband that all the births had been induced by witchcraft. During these years, the Fifteen Years’ War was going at full throttle, but sheer exhaustion and a devastated countryside eventually forced both sides to seek peace. Nadasdy did not live to see peace because he died at Sarvar on January 4, 1604.

With her husband’s death, Báthory became more reckless. By Nadasdy’s will, Sarvar and his other estates, and the education of her son, were entrusted to Imre Megyery, a mysterious figure, perhaps an illegitimate son or a close kinsmen. With good reason, Báthory hated and feared Megyery.

Báthory first moved to the Nadasdy palace in Vienna, where the monks in the monastery across the street complained of inhuman shrieks issuing from the opposite building at night and of blood running from its drains into the street. The monastery’s abbot was told that the countess needed fresh meat for her health.

Báthory spent much time at her various castles, one in western Hungary and others in western Slovakia. Surrounded by trusted female confidants, she was especially intimate with a witch from Sarvar named Anna Darvulia, possibly her lover. Anna may have initiated the practice for which the countess later became so notorious. One day, when one of the countess’s maids was combing her mistress’s hair, the countess struck the girl so hard for her clumsiness that some of the girl’s blood fell on the countess’s arm. When another servant rushed to wipe off the blood, the skin seemed whiter than before. Anna later assured Báthory that she would retain her extraordinary beauty if she bathed in the blood of young virgins. Peasant girls were systematically rounded up, tortured, and then bled to death so that Báthory could bathe in their blood. In her castles were iron cages: A girl placed inside was slashed to ribbons by moveable steel blades, while the countess, standing underneath, was showered in warm blood.

As with many psychopaths, Báthory sought ever-more violent stimulation, and as the tortures became more grotesque and the victims more numerous, rumors spread. At some unknown date, Anna Darvulia died, and Báthory replaced her with a new confidant, a witch named Erzsi Marjorova, a local farmer’s widow from nearby Csejthe. Báthory was beginning to have doubts about the efficacy of her blood baths age was catching up to her and it was Marjorova who suggested that the remedy was to replace the local Slovak peasant-girls with virgins from a higher social class, which Báthory proceeded to do with reckless abandon.

Few questions had been asked regarding the disappearance of peasant girls, but missing higher-class victims provoked inquiry. The Lutheran pastor at Csejthe clashed with the countess over the burial of so many young girls, and he left his successor a report of his suspicions. The second pastor, too, questioned the number of burials, and he uncovered putrefying bodies of young girls in a vault beneath his church. Because of the pastor’s suspicions, Báthory, ostensibly pious, abandoned giving her victims Christian burials. Disposing of the bodies now became an acute problem, and her servants grew careless. Once, when the husband of her eldest daughter, Anna, was visiting Csejthe, his hounds dug up some human remains in the garden.

Times were changing, however. The archduke Matthias yearned for the throne. In January, 1608, the Hungarian diet, headed by prominent Protestant notables such as Báthory’s kinsman, György Thurzo, elected Matthias king of Hungary in exchange for a promise of religious tolerance. On January 25, 1608, Rudolf abdicated the Hungarian throne in favor of his younger brother, and on November 16, 1608, Matthias was crowned in St. Martin’s Cathedral, Pozsony. Báthory probably attended the ceremony, after which Thurzo was appointed palatine (royal deputy) of Hungary. Matthias’s eyes were now fixed on Bohemia and the imperial crown. Although a Catholic, he was much beholden to his Protestant subjects for his recent coronation. Elizabeth Báthory’s behavior presented a dilemma: She was a Protestant and a Báthory, and her kinsman, Gabor Báthory, was prince of Transylvania, but Matthias favored a public inquiry.

Thurzo was more circumspect than the king. He did not doubt the accusations the evidence was overwhelming but a Báthory was a Báthory, and the family had served the state well for generations. His solution was to remove Elizabeth Báthory by force from Csejthe and to incarcerate her in a nunnery; thus, her estates could pass to her legal heirs. Before this plan could be carried through, however, Báthory’s nemesis, Imre Megyery, late in 1610, presented a deposition against her before the Hungarian diet. Events were moving fast, and Thurzo was compelled to act. On December 29, 1610, accompanied by Báthory’s sons-in-law, Miklos Zrinyi and György Drugeth, and Imre Megyery, Thurzo took a company of armed retainers to Csejthe. There was no lack of horrors to uncover; they merely confirmed known facts. Outraged, Báthory protested her innocence, but she was placed under house arrest in the castle. Her servants were transported to Thurzo’s residence at Bytca for questioning.

Two trials ensued, one on January 2, 1611, the other on January 7, 1611. At the first, thirteen witnesses testified; in addition, four of Báthory’s servants testified, providing lurid details of how the countess tortured. At the second trial, conducted in secret at Thurzo’s insistence, a servant girl produced a list of 650 victims’ names, written in the countess’s handwriting.

Two female servants were condemned to have their fingers torn off by the executioner, before being burnt alive. A male servant was beheaded and his body burnt. The fourth escaped a capital sentence. A few days later, the witch, Erzsi Majorova, was apprehended, condemned, and burnt. Elizabeth Báthory was never tried for her crimes, but she was condemned to perpetual confinement in her chamber, where the door and the windows were sealed, leaving only a food hatch for communication. She died, still a prisoner, on August 21, 1614, and her body was eventually removed to Ecsed for interment. Her vast properties were divided between her son and her sons-in-law.

Matthias was not pleased with these secret proceedings; he would have preferred a public trial with confiscation of the countess’s property, but Thurzo was unyielding, supported by petitions from Pal Nadasdy and Miklos Zrinyi, pleading for no further disgrace. Matthias deferred to their pleas: He had other priorities. On May 23, 1611, the Bohemian diet elected him king of Bohemia. In December, 1611, the fifty-five-year-old ruler married his twenty-six-year-old cousin. Finally, on June 13, 1612, he was elected Holy Roman Emperor. The horrors of Csejthe could be forgotten.

Significance

Belief in witchcraft and the occult was widespread in early Renaissance Central Europe. Elizabeth Báthory’s crimes mirror the sadistic mutilations, serial murders, and even cannibalism recorded by the twenty-first century press, as well as those crimes from the distant past.

What is unique about Báthory is the sheer number of her reported victims and the length of her grisly career, which was tolerated in the unjust social order of contemporary Hungary. There were surely criminal psychopaths in Jacobean England, but the social system most likely would have made it nearly impossible for a mass-murderer to kill more than six hundred people.

Bibliography

Elsberg, R. A. von. Die Blutgrafin (Elisabeth Báthory). 2d ed. Breslau, Poland: Schlesiche Verlags-Anstalt v. S. Schottländer, 1904. This is the standard, still-useful biography.

Evans, R. J. W. Rudolf II and His World. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1973. A brilliant account of the occultism embedded in contemporary intellectual life.

McNally, Raymond T. Dracula Was a Woman: In Search of the Blood Countess of Transylvania. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984. A popular account for a nonspecialist readership.

Pocs, Eva. Between the Living and the Dead. Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press, 1999. An authoritative study of witchcraft in early modern Hungary.

Turoczy, Laszlo. Erzébet Báthory. Budapest, Hungary: 1744. Turoczy discovered the transcripts of the Bytca trials, which Thurzo had suppressed, and published the Latin texts in this rare book, which forms the foundation for all later studies.