Elizabeth (Erzhebet) Bathory was born on August 7, 1560, the day of her death on August 21, 1614, after her marriage to Ferens Nadashdi in 1575 - Countess Nadashdi. During her lifetime, she was called Chakhtitskaya (Chetskaya) Pani, and later she was awarded the terrible posthumous nickname Bloody Countess.
Elizabeth Bathory was born in a twilight, cruel time, when battles raged on the borders of Europe day after day: near the southern borders, the Hungarian and Austrian princes bravely repulsed the attacks of the Ottoman Turks, but there was no peace in the rear either - there were bloody clashes between Catholics every now and then. and Protestants. No one was sure of the future - sorcerers, magicians and sorcerers flourished here, offering services of the blackest and most dubious quality, almost every noble family had astrologers and sorcerers as survivors.
Knowledgeable people whispered that whole unions of witches and werewolves were wielding with impunity in the mountains and forests of Transylvania, far from the punishing hand of the inquisitor fathers. Blood generously soaked the Carpathian land, and cruelty, torture and executions were an everyday part of life, from which neither the poor and rootless, nor the rich and noble were able to hide.
Elizabeth belonged to one of the oldest and wealthiest aristocratic families in Eastern Europe of that era - the Bathory family: in 1576 Stefan Bathory - the girl's cousin - became king of Poland, and her other relative was the undivided ruler of Transylvania. There were no warriors brave Bathory in battles with enemies, and no one could compare with them in cruelty and waywardness. They seemed to inherit a bad temper, indomitable lust and a penchant for mind-clouding outbursts of anger, along with estates, castles, titles and jewelry, family diseases - epilepsy and gout.
The white-skinned beauty Elizabeth was no exception - fits of rage seized her suddenly, like a fever - she was able to beat, stab with pins or push any servant out into the cold without clothes, and as soon as blood appeared in the process of punishment, the countess was overwhelmed by incredible excitement, she could torture poor maids for long hours.
The trusted servant Dorko (there was a witness for the prosecution at the trial) was hired to work in the castle under patronage and spent 5 years in the service of the countess. During the trial, she testified that Erzhebet personally tortured the girls - she thrust hot keys and coins into their hands, burned their bodies with spoons and hot irons. When Elizabeth happened to be ill, the girls were taken directly to her bedroom, where she amused herself by biting the unfortunate to the point of blood …
According to the established custom, the young aristocrat also had her own, domestic witch, nicknamed Dorvul. According to legend, the old woman was invited to the castle when an ugly beggar cursed the countess, whom Bathory would accidentally sprinkle with liquid mud during a horse ride. An ugly hunchback with wrinkled skin threatened that soon the beautiful Countess would become exactly the same ugly and ugly!
Soon the sovereign mistress was widowed - but the death of her husband grieved her less than a new gray hair in her hair or a wrinkle in her eyelid! Even the suffering she inflicted on the maids no longer delighted her as before, until Dorotta Shentez - Dorvulya, called the countess a miracle cure that could restore youth: blood, blood of innocent virgins! It will take a lot of blood to fill the bath and immerse an aging body in it, and time will flow back …
Prosecution witness: Uivori Janos, nicknamed Fitzko, an ugly hunchback who lived in the castle from an early age, testified during the trial that for a small fee, gifts - clothes and cheap trinkets - or the promise of a dowry, attractive girls from all over the area were gathered in the castle.
The mistress preferred to enjoy the spectacle of girlish suffering, watching her faithful henchmen Yo Ilona and Darko mock the doomed girls: in the laundry or bathhouse they were beaten so severely that their bodies became black with bruises, then they burned them with a red-hot poker or cast iron, and drove them under needle nails, doused with water in the cold, turning them into ice statues. Burying the bodies was the responsibility of a woman named Kata.
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But, having embarked on the path of witchcraft, Elizabeth Bathory changed her old habit - now she was ready to extract blood day and night and began to torture the girls herself: she opened the veins of the maids, tore their flesh with steel forceps, even plunging her teeth into their flesh! During the night, so much blood was spilled that the lace-trimmed hem of Countess Bathory's nightgown was immediately soaked in blood and sticky to the calves.
Faithful maids sprinkled the floor with ash or coarse salt so that the blood was absorbed, and in the morning they scrubbed the soiled walls for a long time, washed carpets and curtains, hiding the traces of the lady's atrocities. The number of victims became more and more - in the rooms where the bloody aristocrat lived, a heavy spirit hovered: miasma from decomposing blood, which the devil himself could not wash out of the smallest cracks, mixed with the smell of burnt meat and heavy waves of corpse spirit - this is how death itself could smell, who ruled the ball in the possession of Countess Bathory for more than 10 years …
The mistress was annoyed if the bathtub was filled with blood too slowly, so she ordered from Germany a high-performance murder mechanism called the "Nuremberg" or "iron maiden". By the end of the 16th century, all kinds of mechanical curiosities of the most varied and unexpected purposes had just begun to come into fashion among wealthy Europeans. Among the products of skilled mechanics, there were both "love machines" for voluptuous people, and death machines - torture was still a completely legal part of the inquiry process.
The Iron Maiden was a hollow steel cabinet in the shape of a woman dressed in a city dweller's suit, the inner surface of the cabinet was studded with long sharp nails, which were positioned so that their pricks fell on the most painful parts of the body, but did not kill the tortured person immediately.
In the upper part of the "iron maiden" there was an opening for the neck of the unfortunate man, located so that his head was outside the torture cabinet, and the condemned man could answer the questions of his tormentors for some time. The movable bottom of the structure made it possible to easily dispose of the dead body. According to the testimony of witnesses, the Bloody Countess hung up a monstrous device so that the blood of the victim of the "iron maiden" would drain directly into the bathtub.
In fairness, it should be noted that not a single genuine torture mechanism of this kind has survived from the Middle Ages to our time - everything that archaeologists have at their disposal are later copies that were made on the basis of descriptions. This fact served as a reason for scientists to assert that the chilling stories about the "iron maiden" are nothing more than a myth created in the Age of Enlightenment in order to expose the "animal savagery" of that era, but above all - the institution of the Inquisition. So the presence of such a creepy toy in Elizabeth Bathory is possible only with the later admission of her unscrupulous biographers.
But despite all the efforts, the countess did not return to her former youth - she looked only a few years younger than her age. The Countess was at a loss - what to do next: Dorvulya died and could no longer support her with wise advice. Then, in place of the regular witch, the aristocrat invited the famous witch - Mayorova from the town of Maiva, witchcraft potions made from herbs, toad skin and the light of the full moon, and other exotic things were used.
Witchcraft, mixed with blood, was much more dangerous than a criminal offense - the death of serfs was a routine for sovereign masters, although gloomy rumors were already creeping around the area, and young local beauties were hidden away from the eyes of the countess and her faithful servants.
Future victims had to be brought from afar, more and more expenses were needed - the Countess decided to lay one of the ancestral castles. It seems that with the death of Dorvuli, the forest spirits turned their backs on her - one of the beaten girls survived and fled, the new priest, who was called to service 9 corpses at once, suspected something was wrong and filed a complaint, the guardians of the property of the countess's youngest son, Paul, also insisted on the investigation, and she herself was detained when trying to escape.
Officials broke into the castle and found countless evidence of crimes from the remains and instruments of torture to the diary of Elizabeth Bathory, mentioning more than 600 tortured girls. During the trial, the accused behaved with truly royal dignity and confidence, the source of which was seen by many in witchcraft, and others - in the presence of the aristocrat's murderer of crowned patrons.
Be that as it may, her own line of conduct allowed her to save the land from confiscation and in the future to pass it on to her only son Paul. The countess's biography - tragic and passionate - formed the basis for the film Bathory, filmed in 2008 by Vision Films and written by John Paul Chapple, with Anna Friel portraying Elizabeth on the screen.
The possessive countess lived a life that was rather long by the standards of that time and corresponds to the classical image of a vampire more than any other person whose descriptions have been preserved in history. If you believe the testimony of eyewitnesses made during the trial, Elizabeth bit her victims, sometimes tore out whole pieces of living flesh with her teeth and relished the blood that came out of the wounds …
Countess Bathory - murderer or victim?
Is it possible to unconditionally trust the prosecution witnesses? - this is the most difficult question when it comes to the process during which the torture was used. The starting impetus for the investigation of the crimes of Countess Bathory was not the complaints of the victims - after all, among the victims of the Countess there were supposedly impoverished, but noble girls - but exclusively questions of property rights.
It should be noted that Bathory's husband, Count Nadashdi, one of the richest people in all of Eastern Europe, generously credited his patron, King Matthias II. The only chance for the sovereign to avoid returning the debts to the widow of the deceased vassal, and moreover - to expand his own possessions at the expense of the confiscated lands of the Bathory family - was to bring charges of witchcraft and heresy to the lawful mistress of many estates and castles, because only criminal offenses were used to seize land from the heirs wouldn't be enough.
The case soon turned up - the guardian of the countess's youngest son, Imre Mederi, accused Elizabeth of squandering the family property on the grounds that one of the castles had been laid. The authorities entered the castle when the hostess was outside, using a secret entrance - they could both discover real evidence of crimes, and plant fabricated evidence in advance - such as basins stained with dried blood, instruments of torture, jars of witchcraft, or even fake diary.
After all, neither the remains of numerous bodies, nor at least their fragments were presented in court, the relatives of many of the victims were also in no hurry to appear in court and demand justice. Perhaps it was only torture that helped interested persons to obtain testimony from the countess's servant, exposing the hostess as a bloody murderer and a witch who practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism?
However, in the case of Elizabeth Bathory, even the above-described possibility of using fake evidence recedes into the background, because it casts doubt on the authenticity of the materials of the trial. The documents became known to the general public in 1720 thanks to a book on the history of Hungary, written and published by the Jesuit priest Laszlo Turosi.
The author did not use the originals of the court documents, but later copies, although he self-confidently assured the readers that all the materials of this terrible story were seized and sealed more than 100 years ago by order of the then king of Hungary, who was a relative of the “bloody countess”, and now for the first time appear to them wide to the public.
Rejuvenating bloody baths from the blood of innocent victims - generally a free admission of the Jesuit father, which he made on the basis of local traditions and legends, there is no mention of "rejuvenating baths" directly in the materials of the process.
Falsification of historical documents is quite common. The Jesuit historian had at least two motives for such a forgery.
First, the descendants of the Protestant family Bathory-Nadashdi still remained an influential force in the Austro-Hungarian lands, the ability to at least indirectly discredit the family of noble Protestants brought tangible political and ideological dividends to the Catholic Church.
Secondly, in Europe at the beginning of the 18th century, the topic of vampires again gained extraordinary popularity, bordering on hysteria. The book brought Laszlo Turoshi a hefty income, the essay was a huge success with readers precisely because of the chilling bloody details from the life of the Bloody Countess, confirming her involvement in the bloodsucking clan, and therefore the reality of the existence of the vampires themselves.
P. Gorkovsky