Elisabeth Bathory was the Countess that tortured and murdered several young
women and because of this she was known as one of the " true " vampires
of the history. The Bathory Family lived in where we knew today as Slovak
Republic. It's been said that she was Hungarian but that is due to the
fact that in that time the Hungarian borders were not "fixed". She grew
in a property from the Bathory Family, in Ecsed, Transilvania. When she
was a child she was subject the accompanied sudden illnesses of intense
hate and uncontrollable behavior. In 1574, Elisabeth became pregnant from
a brief "affair" with a peasant. But as soon as its "belly" was visible,
she was hidden from everybody, because she was bride of the Count Ferenc
Nadasdy.
Elisabeth married him in May of 1575. As he was a soldier, Count Nadasdy
passed most of the time in campaigns that the Countess had to assume the
duties of taking care of Savar's Castle, property of the Nadasdy Family.
It was there that her malign career really began, with the "teaching" of
a big number of employees, mainly young women. She not only punished those
that infringed her regulations, as well as she found excuses for severe
punishments, delighting with the torture and her victims' death.
It is said that certain day the Countess was being combed by a youth maid,
when the girl accidentally pulled her hair. Elizabeth turned to her and
beat her. The blood sneezed and some drops were in Elizabeth's hand. When
scrubbing the blood in the hands, these seemed to take the girl's forms
jovias. It was starting from this incident that Elizabeth developed her
reputation of wanting the virgin youths' blood. Conde Nadasdy not only
participated in her wife's cruel acts as he taught to her new torture forms.
He came to die in 1604. After his death, Elisabeth moved to Vienna and
soon, after sometime she moved to the Solar of Cachtice, the place that
was the scenery of her more vicious and famous acts. A second history speaks
about Elizabeth's behavior after the death of her husband, when it was
said that she wrapped up with younger men. In one occasion, when she was
in company of one of those men, she saw an old woman and she asked him:
"What would you make if you had to kiss that old witch "?. The man answered
with scorn words. The old woman, however, when hearing that dialogue accused
Elizabeth for excessive vanity and increased that such appearance was inevitable,
even for a countess. Several historians have been tying the death of Elizabeth's
husband and that history, its concern that she to take a bath in blood
because she feared to grow old. In the following years after the death
of the husband, Elisabeth got a new companion for her sadistic acts: a
woman called Anna Darvulia, who is not very known. When the health of Darvulia
it worsened, Elisabeth went back to Erzsi Majorova, a local farmer's widow,
her tenant. And it seems that this was the responsible person for the Countess's
decline because she motivated her to include among the victims, women from
the nobility, by virtue of the difficulty that Elisabeth was having to
get new maids (or they would be victims?). After all, the Countess's fame
and its behavior were already known by all the villages around. In 1609,
Elisabeth killed a noble youth and she hid the fact alleging suicide. In
1610, the investigations about the countess's crimes began. Actually, it
was more for political reasons (Count Nadasdy had lent money to the King
and this wanted to see free from such loan confiscating the Countess's
latifundium). Even so the suspicions of her murders, were plus than an
excuse to sum up the plans of the crown. With that, on December 26, 1610,
Countess Elisabeth Bathory was arrested and judged some days later. On
January 7, 1611, it was presented as test, a diary contends all her victims'
names, registered with its own letter. In totality they were 650 victims.
Besides her murderess reputation and sadistic, she was still accused of
being a "werewolf" and a vampire. During her judgement, several people
affirmed that she bit the girls' body that she tortured. She was accused
then of drain the blood of her victimsand of taking a bath in that blood
to retain the youth. For all the parameters, Elisabeth was a very attractive
woman.
The Book of Werewolves registers the basic legend of a Hungarian Countess that killed her maids to take a bath in their blood, once she imagined that that treatment would maintain her skin young and healthy. The truth is that she murdered 650 girls for that end. (...) The testimony of hundreds of people demonstrated that her use of blood for cosmetic purposes was legend, but it confirmed that she in fact killed more than 650 girls (she remembers each cruelty in her diary). The Countess evidently liked to bite and dilacerar her youths maids' meat. One of her nicknames was "Tiger of Cachtice". She tortured (...) also in Vienna, where it possessed a mansion in the Agostinians Street(...), close to the real palace in the downtown. During the judgement in 1611, it was confirmed that " in Vienna, the monks thrown themselves bodies against the windows when they heard screams (of the girls being tortured)." Those monks certainly were from the old Agostinian Monastery that confronts the mansion Bathory. In the basement, Elizabeth ordered a blacksmith to build one species of wood compartment, or cell, where she tortured slays. The constant marriages in family among the noble families of Hungary, destined to maintain the properties to each other, took? genetic degeneration; own Elizabeth was subject of epileptical attacks .
A little before completing 15 years, Elizabeth married Ferenc Nadasdy.
Ferenc (...) was so cruel as his wife. When he was at home, his distraction
was torturing Turkish prisoners. He taught even some torture techniques
to Elizabeth. One of them, very painful, it was a variation of the " hot
foot", in that paper pieces soaked in oil are placed among the fingers
of the lazy employees' foot, to the which if atheistic fire, doing with
that slays see pain stars trying to get rid of the fire.
(...) Elizabeth buried needles in the meat and under the its maids' fingernails.
She also put coins and keys heated up to the red in the hands of those
tortured, or then, she used iron to mark the indolent maids' face.
Also play girls in the snow while cold water was thrown on them until that
died frozen.
(...) The girl was taken outside without clothes and its body scrubbed
with honey and she stayed outdoors for 24 hours, so that she could be pricked
by mosquitos, bees and other insects.
(...) Her put fire on the pubians of one of her maids.
Once, she opened a maid's mouth til that they tore. Barthory made all this
very peacefully because she was a Hungarian aristocrat; the servants were
Slavic, and they could be treated as property or object, as cruelly as
she wanted because they didn't have for who to appeal.
CURIOSITY (or coincidence?):
There is many connections among Bathory and Dracula families. The boss
in command of the expedition that restored Dracula in the throne in 1476
was the Príncipe Stephen Bathory; besides, a feud of Dracula it
passed to the hands of Barthory during Elizabeth's time. The ancestors'
Hungarian side of Dracula can have relationship with the clan Bathory.
BIBLIOGRAFY:
* McNally, Raymond T. & Florescu, Radu. "In Search of Dracula and other Vampires".
* Melton, J. Gordon. "The Vampire Book
- The encyclopedia of the Undead".