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Elizabeth Báthory

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A portrait of the Bloody Lady of Čachtice

Countess 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 who lived in the Čachtice Castle near Trenčín, in present-day Slovakia.

She is considered the most famous serial killer in Slovak and Hungarian history. She spent most of her life at the Čachtice Castle, and dabbled in the occult. After her husband's death, she and her four alleged collaborators were accused of torturing and killing between 600 and 700 girls and young women. In 1611, she was imprisoned in solitary confinement, where she stayed until her death three years later. Her nobility allowed her to avoid an immediate execution. However, three of her four alleged collaborators were put to death.

The Bathory case inspired many stories, featuring the Countess bathing in her victims' blood in order to retain her youth. This inspired another nickname, the "Blood Countess".

Life

Báthory was born in Nyírbátor, Hungary, on August 7, 1560 and died on August 21, 1614 in Čachtice (Csejte, Schächtitz), present-day Slovakia.

She spent her childhood at Ecsed Castle. At the age of 11 she was engaged to Ferencz Nádasdy and moved to Nádasdy Castle in Sárvár. In 1575, she married Nádasdy in Vranov nad Topľou. In 1578, he became the chief commander of Hungarian troops, leading them to war against the Turks. He was considered brave, but cruel. The Turks feared him and called him the "Black Beg".

Nádasdy’s wedding gift to Elizabeth was his home, 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 finally bought the castle from Emperor Rudolf II, so that it became a property of the Nádasdy family. With her husband away at war, Elizabeth ran the castle's affairs and local defences. An educated woman who could read and write in four languages, her job was to keep the Turks away from Vienna at the behest of the Habsburgs who ruled Royal Hungary.[1] This was a dangerous task. The village of Cachtice was plundered by the Turks in 1599.[2] This was during the height of the Long War, the result of which kept the Turks safely away from Vienna for many decades and rendered them a minimal threat to the West during the duration of the Thirty Years War, but at great cost to Hungary.

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

Her husband died in either 1602 or 1604. Various sources attribute his death to an illness, to a murder at the hands of a prostitute, or to an injury sustained in battle. Another view holds that he was murdered by general Giorgio Basta, whose reign of terror in Transylvania at that time led to a sharp decline in the Báthory family's power.

Murder allegations

Elizabeth allegedly killed young women between the years 1585 and 1610. Although her husband and her relatives knew about her sadistic inclination, they did not directly intervene. While her husband lived, she seems to have 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. She is also said to have tortured some girls at her properties in Sárvár and Keresztúr.

In the latest History Channel documentary about the history of vampires, which aired on October 31st 2006, Bathory was described as having been lesbian, having sexual affairs with her victims, drinking their blood while they were still alive, and killing them after she became bored with them. Her victims were initially local peasant girls, many of whom were lured to Čachtice 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 of grace and etiquette to entice the lower gentry to hand their daughters over. 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. In the History Channel documentary, her victims are alleged to have been in the low hundreds over the course of a ten year period.

Investigation of her actions

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 King 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. Moreover, Elizabeth’s nephew Gabriel Báthory was the ruler of Transylvania and Thurzo feared his reaction. 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 Blood 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.

More than 300 people were interrogated before her death in 1614. The evidence against her 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.

Collaborators

A shadowy figure named Anna Darvulia, a suspected local 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(gyspies). 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.

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", or Karabeg in Turkish. Some writers claim the Báthorys 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[3].

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 Báthory 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 Gabriel Báthory (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[4][5]. 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.

Elizabeth Báthory in folklore and literature

18th and 19th century: the Blood Countess

The case of Elizabeth Báthory inspired numerous stories and fairy tales. Eighteenth and 19th century writers liberally added or omitted elements of the narrative. The most common motif of this works was the countess' bathing in her victims' blood in order to retain beauty or youth. Another element mentioned quite consistently is her accidental discovery of the bloodbath practice. The countess, typically characterized as a cruel person, would slap a female servant in rage, splashing parts of her own skin with blood. Upon removal of the blood, that portion of skin would seem more beautiful than before [citation needed].

McNally, who could find no reliable evidence for the bloodbath legends, concluded that they were attempts to explain how a woman could be guilty of causing so many deaths. Women were not believed to be capable of violence for its own sake. Therefore, the idea emerged that vanity was the root cause, in order to reconcile Báthory's actions with her sex (Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally).

Some versions of the story were told with the purpose of denouncing female vanity, while other versions intended to entertain or thrill their audience. Those would indulge in torture chamber fantasies, adding elaborate, but largely generic methods and devices of torture, including spiked cages or iron maidens[citation needed].

Elizabeth Báthory and the vampire myth

The emergence of the bloodbath myth coincides with vampire scares that haunted Europe in the early 18th century, reaching even into educated and scientific circles. The strong connection between the bloodbath myth and vampire myth was not made until the 1970s. The first connections were made to promote works of fiction by linking them to the already commercially successful Dracula story. A 1970 movie based on Báthory and the bloodbath myth was titled Countess Dracula.

Báthory biographers, McNally in particular, have tried to establish the bloodbath myth and the historical Elizabeth Bathory as a source of influence for Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, pointing to similarities in settings and motifs and the fact that Stoker might have read about her. While this assertion grew popular with authors writing on the vampire myth, it is not supported by evidence and refuted by other authors.[citation needed]

Modern interpretations

Later authors introduced a sexual perspective. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose favourite motif of female dominance would later coin the term masochism, was inspired to write his 1886 novella "Ewige Jugend" (eternal youth)[citation needed].

Many works of fiction portray the countess as bisexual or lesbian, drawing on the belief that her victims were exclusively women[citation needed].

Film

There have been several movies about Elizabeth Báthory:

Music

  • The black metal band Bathory took its name from the Blood Countess, and their first three albums have songs about her, including "Woman of Dark Desires".
  • The gothic 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 three-part song on their Karma album about Bathory called "Elizabeth".
  • British thrash 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.
  • American hardcore 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 session vocalist Malefic of the black metal band Xasthur nailed inside a coffin, to recreate the kind of terror those that Countess Bathory tortured must have felt.
  • A Finnish black metal band Barathrum has a song called "Countess Erszebeth Nadasdy" on their album "Saatana"
  • A black metal band God Dethroned has a song called "Villa Vampiria" about her and her desire to bathe in blood on their album "Ravenous"
  • Nocticula, a metal band from Russia, had a track called "Transylvanian Pearl" depicting Elizabeth Bathory

Fiction

  • Báthory is the main character in a fictional adaptation of her historical legend entitled The Blood Confession by Alisa Libby, published in 2006 by Dutton Juvenile.
  • 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 LSU and columnist with NPR.
  • "The Bloody Countess" by Alejandra Pizarnik was a short gothic work of fiction written in 1968. It has been reprinted in The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales, ed. Chris Baldick.
  • 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 TV series Quantum Leap, in an episode called Blood Moon, a ceremony is held in honor of one Count Bathory, a vampire.
  • In the science fiction short story "Rumfuddle" by Jack Vance, a baby who would have grown up to be Elizabeth Báthory is taken to a different time and place in history.
  • In the video game Bloodrayne, there is a boss, a doctor called Bathory Menegele, that beliave that she is a direct descendent of Elizabeth Báthory.
  • Elizabeth Bathory was also a main ploy in the 2006 movie "Stay Alive"....but is said she only killed up to 30 something girls. But she is also potrayed as a "witch" in the movie, because she is mentioned in the ""Witches Hammer"" a book for witch hunters.

Games

  • In the VCR/DVD boardgame Atmosfear, Elizabeth Bathory is a playable character and is portrayed as a vampiress.
  • In the video game Castlevania: Bloodlines, there is a character named Elizabeth Bartley, whose history is strikingly similar to Báthory's.
  • 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 online role-playing game Ragnarok Online, there is a monster known as the "Bathory" that inhabits the Clock Tower. Bathory is depicted as an old witch in purple on a broomstick.
  • In the online role-playing game EverQuest II, there is a quest called "The Blood Countess Rises", which tells the tale of a countess who killed her people and bathed in their blood, in order to have eternal youth.
  • In the VHS Board Game, Nightmare, one of the characters involved is named "Elizabeth Bathory, the Vampire".

Toys

She is featured in McFarlane Toys 6 Faces of Madness series, a collection of action figures that included, among others, Rasputin and Vlad the Impaler. Bathory's character is depicted bathing in blood while the heads of the some of the victims are impaled in a candelabrum.

References and further reading

  • McNally, Raymond T. (1983). Dracula Was a Woman: In Search of the Blood Countess of Transylvania. New York: McGraw Hill. ISBN 0070456712.
  • Farin, Michael (2003). Heroine des Grauens. Elisabeth Báthory. Munich: P. Kirchheim. ISBN 3-87410-038-3. (all relevant sources in German translation).
  • Nash, Jay Robert (1983). Look For the Woman. New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc. ISBN 0871313367.
  • Varesi, Andreas. Das Geheimnis der Bathory. Facility Management Publ. ISBN 3000172165.
  • Thorne, Tony (1997). Countess Dracula. Bloomsbury. ISBN 0747529000.
  • Penrose, Valentine (1970). The Bloody Countess. Calder & Boyars. ISBN 0714501344.
  • Codrescu, Andrei (1995). The Blood Countess. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc. ISBN 0684802449.
  • Bathory Al Babel, Gia (2006). The Trouble with the Pears: An Intimate Portrait of Erzsebet Bathory. Authorhouse. ISBN 1425910394.
  • Nagy, László (1984). A rossz hírű Báthoryak. Kossuth Könyvkiadó. ISBN 9630923084.
  • Guinness World Records (2006); page 133

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