“The Countess made the maid undress, stand in front of her, took a knife and began to cut the unfortunate hand. Start from the fingers, rising higher and higher. Then she burned the girl's hands with a candle until she died. This is a fragment of the testimony of valet Benedict Deseo, who in January 1611 was one of the witnesses in the trial against Countess Erzsebet Bathory. As it turned out later, the bloodthirsty countess tortured about 650 people with her own hands, mostly beautiful girls. In fits of madness, she tortured her maids and, they say, literally bathed in their blood … Who was this terrible woman?
Noble Bride
Erzsebet Bathory was born in Hungary in 1560. She belonged to a very noble family. Her uncle, Stefan Batory, was the king of Poland, and her brother, Gabor Batory, was the ruler of Transylvania (today Central Romania). Other representatives of the Bathory clan were also rulers and kings at different times. At the age of 15, Erzhebet was married to Count Ferenc Nadazdi, who, for political reasons, changed his last name to Batory.
Someone may doubt the fairness of the accusations against Erzsebet Bathory, seeing in them an attempt to discredit one of the most noble Hungarian families - however, the evidence is too numerous, and the evidence is too obvious. Erzhebet kept a diary, in which she meticulously described every step of her bloody path of 35 years.
Was she inspired by her husband?
Ferenc Bathory was a cruel commander who tortured prisoners with pleasure, danced with the corpses of slain enemies, and threw their severed heads up like balls. Perhaps the countess, having looked at her husband's cruel pleasures, decided to keep up with him? However, she knew from childhood that noble persons are allowed anything, and she used it without hesitation. She loved to whip her maids for fun, and in a fit of rage she could scratch the face of the unfortunate maid. The contemplation of the flow of blood from the victim's deep wound delighted the young sadist.
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Later, these vicious inclinations took on a sexual connotation. Erzhebet was naturally dissolute, and her husband preferred countless wars to the arms of his wife. Left to herself, the Countess got a taste for perverted sexual amusements, which escalated into bloody orgies.
In the vicinity of the castle, young girls began to disappear. “The countess killed three girls, but before that she stuck needles under their nails, personally heated the iron with which she burned them,” one witness later stated at the trial.
Theater of pain and death
With the help of the servant Torko, the servants of Ilona, Dorothy and Szentes, as well as the dwarf Yohannes, the countess threw her young beautiful maids and girls from the surrounding villages into the dungeon of her castle Ceze, where she subjected them to terrible torture. Torture chambers were installed not only in the main residence of Erzsebet, but also in the Beckov castle on the Vah river. In another terrible family castle Batoriev, Chakhtitsa, where there were spacious wine cellars, the countess arranged her own theater of pain and death. There they tortured for a long time, killed slowly, with gusto. The countess used a hot iron, whipped naked girls with a whip, starved and thirsty. Besides, she came up with a monstrous honey torture. She made the girl undress, smeared her with honey and, tying her to a tree, left her in the forest to be devoured by insects. Erzsebet's young maids thought they were luckyif they were simply stripped naked and forced to serve at the table in this form. In winter, girls were driven out into the cold for fun, doused with water and watched as they turned into ice statues.
Genetic deformity?
Can you find a reason or some reasonable explanation for such incredible cruelty? There are different opinions on this matter. "Her quirks were caused by the so-called impulsive sadism, in which a person commits crimes under the pressure of an irresistible inner impulse," says the Slovak writer Andrei Stiavnitsky. - At the same time, the person is not mentally ill. Such people are often characterized by sexual deviations and perversions."
The unhealthy extravagance can be attributed to the partial degeneration of the Bathory clan, where close relatives often marriages for political reasons. It is known that Erzhebet's aunt, Clara Bathory, famous for debauchery and cruelty, did not shy away from perverted pleasures. Many men of the family were famous for the same.
The thorns pierced the body
Erzhebet was a very beautiful woman. When her beauty began to fade with age, she tried to hide it with makeup and luxurious clothes, but nothing saved her from wrinkles.
One fateful day, the maid, while combing her mistress, hurt her. The countess flew into a rage and hit the girl so hard that blood spattered from the unfortunate woman's nose right onto Erzhebet's face. At that moment, it seemed to the countess that where the blood got into, the wrinkles were smoothed out. And then she remembered the ancient legend of the Transylvanians that the blood contains the physical and spiritual qualities of a person and these qualities can be obtained by taking possession of his blood.
Since then, by order of Erzhebet, her faithful servants began to kidnap young virgins in the villages. The blood of these unfortunates was supposed to return youth and beauty to the aging countess. According to the legends, Bathory had a special device - a camera called the "iron maiden". It was an iron cabinet in the shape of a female figure, the inner surface of which was seated with sharp long spikes. When the closet door slammed shut, thorns pierced the body of the girl trapped inside it. At the same time, the victim did not die immediately, but bled out for a long time. This blood filled the stone bath where Bathory bathed.
Death will set her free from darkness
The number of victims became more and more, and when bloodless corpses began to be found outside the walls of the castle, and besides, girls of noble rank began to disappear, bad rumors spread around the district. These rumors reached the countess's husband, who decided to investigate what was happening. But, barely starting the investigation, he died suddenly under mysterious circumstances …
The slaughter continued with impunity. The Reverend Andras Bertoni, a Lutheran pastor, faced a terrible truth when Erzhebet ordered him to secretly bury the disfigured corpses. He wanted to expose the criminal, but was killed.
At the beginning of 1610, the Reverend Father Janos Ponikenusz, disturbed by rumors, secretly visited the castle, where he discovered a torture cellar and several fresh corpses. He immediately visited King Matthew Habsburg of Hungary, and only then was Erzsebet Bathory charged with atrocities.
For political reasons, Erzsebet did not attend the closed trial. All her accomplices were executed, and she herself, given her noble birth, was sentenced to life imprisonment.
At the beginning of 1611, the aging but still beautiful countess was immured in the tower of the Cesze castle. Only a small hole was left in the masonry for feeding. The bloody Countess of Transylvania lived in darkness and loneliness for another three years.
On August 14, 1614, Bathory was found dead, with a grimace of inexpressible horror on her face. Perhaps, before her death, her many victims appeared to her, and this woman was horrified by what she had done?