Countess Elizabeth Báthory of Ecsed (, ; ; 7 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) was a Hungarian noblewoman, aristocrat, and alleged serial killer from the powerful House of Báthory, who owned land in the Kingdom of Hungary. She was the wife of Hungarian nobleman and influential politician Ferenc Nádasdy of the House of Nádasdy. Báthory and four of her servants were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and women from 1590 to 1610. Bathory and her cohorts were charged for 80 counts of murder and were convicted. Her servants were put on trial and executed, whereas Báthory was imprisoned within the Castle of Csejte, Hungary (now Čachtice, Slovakia) until she died in her sleep in 1614.
According to scholars such as Michael Farin, the accusations against Báthory were supported by testimony from more than 300 individuals, some of whom described physical evidence and the presence of mutilated dead, dying and imprisoned girls found at the time of her arrest. Other scholars suggest that the accusations were a spectacle to destroy her family's influence in the region, which was considered a threat to the political interests of her neighbours, including the Habsburg empire.
Stories about Báthory quickly became part of national folklore. Legends describing her vampiric tendencies, such as the tale that she bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth, were based on rumours and only recorded as supposedly factual over a century after her death. Although these stories were repeated by at least three historians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they are considered unreliable by modern historians. Some insist that Elizabeth's story inspired Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (1897), although Stoker's notes on the novel provided no direct evidence to support this hypothesis. Nicknames and literary epithets attributed to her include Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.
Biography Early life and education
Elizabeth was born in 1560 on a family estate in Nyírbátor, Royal Hungary, and spent her childhood at Ecsed Castle. Her father was Baron George VI Báthory (), of the Ecsed branch of the family and brother of Andrew Bonaventura Báthory (), who ruled as Voivode of Transylvania. Her paternal great-grandparents were Anna Radziwiłł, a member of the influential Polish-Lithuanian Radziwiłł family, and Konrad III Rudy, Duke of Masovia and Warsaw, who was a member of the Piast dynasty. Her mother was Baroness Anna Báthory of Somlyó (1537–1570), a member of the other line of the Báthory family and the daughter of Stephen VIII Báthory of Somlyó, Palatine of Hungary. Through her mother, Elizabeth was the niece of Stephen Báthory (1533–1586), Prince of Transylvania, who became the ruler of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. She had several siblings; her older brother Stephen (1555–1605) served as a judge royal of Hungary.
Báthory was raised a Calvinist Protestant, and she learned Latin, German, Hungarian, and Greek as a young woman. Born into a privileged noble family, she was endowed with wealth, education, and a prominent social rank. A proposal made by some sources to explain Báthory's cruelty later in her life is that she was trained by her family to be cruel.
As a child, Báthory had multiple seizures that may have been caused by epilepsy. At the time, symptoms relating to epilepsy were diagnosed as falling sickness, and treatments included rubbing the blood of a non-sufferer on the lips of one with epilepsy and giving the person with epilepsy a mix of a non-sufferer's blood and a piece of skull as their episode ended.
At the age of 13, before her first marriage, Báthory allegedly gave birth to a child. The child, said to have been fathered by a peasant boy, was supposedly given away to a local woman who was trusted by the Báthory family. The woman was paid for her actions, and the child was taken to Wallachia. Evidence of this pregnancy came up long after Elizabeth's death as rumours spread by peasants, leaving the veracity of said evidence questionable.
Marriage and land ownership
In 1574, Báthory was engaged to Count Ferenc Nádasdy, a member of the Nádasdy family. It was a political marriage between the circles of the aristocracy. Nádasdy was the son of Baron Tamás Nádasdy de Nádasd et Fogarasföld (1498–1562) and his wife, Orsolya Kanizsai (1523–1571).
On 8 May 1575, Báthory and Nádasdy were married at the palace of Varannó (today Vranov nad Topľou, Slovakia). The marriage resulted in combined land ownership in both Transylvania and the Kingdom of Hungary.
Nádasdy's wedding gift to Báthory was his household in the Čachtice Castle (Castle of Csejte), situated in the Little Carpathians near Vág-Újhely and Trencsén (present-day Nové Mesto nad Váhom and Trenčín, Slovakia). At the time, Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, owned the castle but made Ferenc's mother, Orsolya Kanizsai, the official steward in 1569. Nádasdy finally bought the castle in 1602 from Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, but during his constant military campaigns, Elizabeth maintained the castle in his absence, along with the Csejte country house and seventeen adjacent villages.
After the wedding, the couple lived in Nádasdy's castle at Sárvár. In 1578, three years into their marriage, Nádasdy became the chief commander of Hungarian troops, leading them to war against the Ottomans. Báthory managed business affairs and the family's multiple estates during the war. This role usually included responsibility for the Hungarians and Slovaks, providing medical care during the Long Turkish War (1593–1606), and Báthory was charged with the defence of her husband's estates, which lay on the route to Vienna. The threat of attack was significant, as the village of Csejte had previously been plundered by the Ottomans, while Sárvár, near the border dividing Royal Hungary and Ottoman Hungary, was in even greater danger.
Báthory's daughter, Anna Nádasdy, was born in 1585 and was later to become the wife of Nikola VI Zrinski. Báthory's other known children include Orsolya (Orsika) Nádasdy (1590–unknown), who would later become the wife of István II Benyó; Katalin (Kata or Katherina) Nádasdy (1594–unknown); András Nádasdy (1596–1603); and Pál (Paul) Nádasdy (1598–1650), father of Franz III. Nádasdy, who was one of the leaders of the Magnate conspiracy against Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor. Some chronicles also indicate that the couple had another son, Miklós Nádasdy, who married Zsuzsanna Zrinski, though those chronicles are not confirmed. He may have been a cousin or died young, for he is not named in Báthory's will from 1610. György Nádasdy is also supposedly the name of one of the deceased Nádasdy infants, but this cannot be confirmed. All of Elizabeth's children were cared for by governesses, as Báthory herself had been.
Ferenc Nádasdy died on 4 January 1604 at the age of 48. Although the exact nature of the illness that led to his death is unknown, it seems to have started in 1601 and initially caused debilitating pain in his legs. From then on, he never fully recovered and became permanently disabled in 1603. He had been married to Báthory for 29 years. Before dying, Nádasdy entrusted his heirs and widow to György Thurzó, who would eventually lead the investigation into Báthory's crimes.
Accusations
Between 1602 and 1604, after rumours of Báthory's atrocities had spread throughout the kingdom, Lutheran minister István Magyari made complaints against her, both publicly and at the court in Vienna. In 1610, Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor, assigned György Thurzó, the devoutly Lutheran Palatine of Hungary, to investigate. Thurzó ordered two notaries, András Keresztúry and Mózes Cziráky, to collect evidence in March 1610.Letters from Thurzó to both men on 5 March 1610, printed in By October 1610, they had collected 52 witness statements and by 1611, that number had risen to over 300.
Tamás Nyereghjárto was 35 years old when he was sworn in and interrogated in the town of Beckov. He stated that he saw a girl in Újhely who was being medically treated because the flesh on her right hand between the fingers and the arm was torn out and the tendon was destroyed. Janós Kunx (age 50 years) was the provisor of Franciscus Magochy in Beckov; his wife, Katalin (aged 36 years) testified that she had also seen this girl in Újhely. She testified similarly to her husband and Nyereghjárto, adding that the flesh between the victim's shoulders had been removed and that the right hand of the girl was "completely destroyed". Martinus Zamechnyk (aged 50 years) testified that he had asked this girl from Újhely, "Who did that to your hand?" The girl replied: "The Lady Widow Nádasdy had done it", referring to Báthory. His testimony was taken by András of Keresztúr and published on 28 July 1611 on the orders of King Matthias II.
According to one of her accomplices, Dorottya Szentes, Báthory would stick needles into the fingers of some of her victims. After she did this, Báthory would comment: "If it hurts the whore, then she can pull it out". However, Szentes added that if the girl removed the needle, Báthory would then cut off the finger with a knife.
During the trial, many atrocities were said to have occurred in many of Báthory's castles. These atrocities usually included severe beatings with cudgels, needles inserted into lips, arms, shoulders, and fingernails, and flesh cut out from the buttocks and between the shoulders, which was then roasted. Many victims were locked in the castle's dungeons and starved for weeks. Red-hot pokers and irons were used to scorch the arms and abdomen of the victims, knives plunged into arms and feet, fingers cut off with scissors and shears, and girls made to stand naked in the winter cold and then doused with water till they froze to death.
Critically, a handful of individuals provided first-hand accounts of Báthory's crimes at the trial. Three of these individuals included Jakab Szivássy, Gergely Paztory, and Benedek Deseö. Deseö was the head of "The Lord's staff" at Castle Csejte and was responsible for operations at the castle. Since Deseö and Szivássy were around Báthory the most, they gave the most detailed confessions of what they witnessed during their time of service at Castle Csejte. These three men were not tortured into confessions, unlike Báthory's accomplices (Ilona, Janós, Dorottya, etc.). After Deseö was sworn in, he testified that Báthory "took a shoemaker's daughter named 'Illonka', stripped her naked and began to cruelly torment her by taking a knife, and beginning with the fingers, shoved the knife into both arms up the arms, then flogging her over again, then took a burning candle to her and burned her skin, and continued to torment her until she put an end to her life". He also testified that Báthory would "stick a sewing needle in her victims arms and use it to cut her way up the arm of a girl who could not sew." Deseö also testified that Báthory would withhold food and water from her victims until they became very thirsty.
Gergely Paztory was a court judge at Castle Sárvár for Elizabeth Báthory and was forty years old when he was sworn in and testified. He testified that a "young woman from Bratislava named Modl accompanied Báthory and Paztory on a trip to Fuzer". He continued, "The Lady Báthory forced her to dress up and act like a young girl, Modl pleaded for forgiveness as she could not act like a young girl since she is already married and has a child". Following this, in Jakab Szivássy's testimony, Jakab added that the "young woman called Modl, since she did not want to be a girl, Báthory had cut out her flesh and roasted it". After this incident, she continued to torment Modl until she was killed at Sárvár. These testimonies were collected by Mózes Cziráky and were published on 14 December 1611, in his report on the orders of King Matthias II.