7 August: Elizabeth Bathory

Born on 7 August 1560 was Elizabeth Bathory, a ruler of Transylvania and possibly the most prolific serial killer in history. Here are some facts about her:

1. Her family's history started with a legend in which a warrior called Vitus killed a Dragon that was terrorising Ecsed, in the Heves County of Hungary. Vitus allegedly killed the dragon with three thrusts of his lance and was rewarded with a castle. From then on he took the surname Bathory, meaning ‘good hero.’ The family went on to produce prime ministers, dukes and even kings. They owned more land than the Hungarian crown.
2. Elizabeth’s parents were Gyorgy and Anna Bathory, cousins who married to unite two opposing branches of the Bathory family.
3. Elizabeth was betrothed, at the age of 11, to Ferenc Nadasdy, the son of the then Palatine (prime minister) of Hungary. Ferenc was 15 at the time and was away at school. The custom of the time was for the future bride to leave home to be educated and cared for by her fiance's family. In Elizabeth's case, the arrangement went somewhat awry. Both Ferenc's parents died before she got there, and with Ferenc away at school, it fell to the servants to look after her.
4. Rumour has it that Elizabeth became pregnant at the age of 13, and had a daughter, Anastasia, who was sent away and brought up in Transylvania. The father is thought to have been a servant or minor noble named Ladislav Bende. Whether he raped Elizabeth or whether they had an affair isn't known. Ferenc, according to one story, wasn't best pleased and had Bende castrated and torn apart by dogs.
5. Nevertheless, the wedding went ahead when Elizabeth was 15 and Ferenc 19. It had to, to save face and preserve the alliance between the two families. Since the Bathorys were a more important family than the Nadasdys, Elizabeth insisted on keeping her maiden name after the marriage. The marriage lasted 29 years until Ferenc died, aged 48, from an unknown illness that began with excruciating pains in his legs.
6. Elizabeth is said to have tortured servant girls in numerous ways - burning them with pokers and red hot coins, throwing them outside in the snow until they froze to death, tearing off their fingers with pincers, smearing them with honey and making them stand outside to be bitten and stung by insects, biting off chunks of their flesh and either making them eat it or eating it herself. One thing she didn't do is bathe in their Blood to preserve her youth. She's said to have got torture ideas from Ferenc, who was often away and would send her letters full of suggestions.
7. In due course, a Lutheran minister called Istvan Magyari grew suspicious about the number of bodies of young female servants sent by the castle for burial. The Countess claimed they'd died of cholera. However, as they were only servants, and could only raise a complaint through Ferenc Nadasdy or his wife, they were understandably afraid to do so and nothing was done. What the local families could do was stop sending their daughters into service at the castle, and so Elizabeth ran out of servant girls to torture. So in 1610 she opened a school for young noblewomen - and a lot of them started dying, too. Their families took the matter to Matthias II, King of Hungary.
8. Elizabeth was arrested, along with four of her servants who were accused of helping her. Some accounts say she was caught in the act of torturing somebody. It seems she knew the law was catching up with her, because she'd already transferred all her estates and possessions to her children to avoid them being confiscated if she was found guilty. Three of the four servants were executed. A fourth got life imprisonment because they were deemed to be acting under duress. Elizabeth's punishment was to be walled up in her castle with just a small opening for ventilation and the passing of food. She lived like that for three years, until she died.
9. Elizabeth Bathory is said to have killed somewhere between 80 and 650 women. However, details about her life are a bit sketchy. Was she a sadist who became that way because of brutalities she witnessed as a child, or possibly due to inbreeding in the family? Ferenc has a reputation for being brutal, too, so did he influence her? Or, was she a victim of an ancient smear campaign? There are letters she wrote which express concern over the hardships of some of her servants and there's evidence that she sometimes intervened on behalf of destitute women. She was an educated and powerful woman who went against convention (eg keeping her maiden name). She was left alone a lot of the time to run Ferenc's estates and may have taken lovers during that time. There's nothing powerful men in those times hated more than a woman like that. In addition, the King of Hungary owed her money, so it could all have been lies spread by him to avoid having to pay the money back. We'll probably never know.
10. The ruins of her home, the Castle of Cahtice, still stand in modern Slovakia. As for Elizabeth Bathory's grave, the location of that is unknown. She was said to have been buried in the church of Čachtice initially, but local people caused an uproar, not wanting the "Blood Countess" buried in their churchyard, so her remains were moved to the Báthory family crypt.

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Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

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