Bloody Countess
Ailene Goldhirsh
The charges levelled against Bthory have been described by several historians as a witch-hunt.[6][7][8] Other writers, such as Michael Farin in 1989, have said that the accusations against Bthory 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.[9] Recent sources claim 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.[10]
Stories about Bthory quickly became part of national folklore.[11] Legends describing her vampiric tendencies, such as the tale that she bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth, were generally recorded years after her death and are considered unreliable.[4] Some insist she inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897),[12] although Stoker's notes on the novel provided no direct evidence to support this hypothesis.[13] Nicknames and literary epithets attributed to her include Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.[1]
Bthory was raised a Calvinist Protestant,[5] and learned Latin, German, Hungarian and Greek as a young woman.[3][15][16] Born into a privileged noble family, she was endowed with wealth, education, and a prominent social rank.[14] A proposal made by some sources[who?] in order to explain Bthory's cruelty later in her life is that she was trained by her family to be cruel.[17]
As a child, Bthory had multiple seizures that may have been caused by epilepsy.[15] At the time, symptoms relating to epilepsy were diagnosed as falling sickness and treatments included rubbing blood of a non-sufferer on the lips of an epileptic or giving the epileptic a mix of a non-sufferer's blood and piece of skull as their episode ended.[18][original research?]
At the age of 13, before her first marriage, Bthory allegedly gave birth to a child.[17] The child, said to have been fathered by a peasant boy, was supposedly given away to a local woman who was trusted by the Bthory family.[17] The woman was paid for her actions, and the child was taken to Wallachia.[17] Evidence of this pregnancy came up long after Elizabeth's death, through rumours spread by peasants; therefore, the validity of the rumour is often disputed.
In 1573,[10] Bthory was engaged to Count Ferenc Ndasdy, a member of the Nadasdy family. It was a political arrangement within the circles of the aristocracy. Ndasdy was the son of Baron Tams Ndasdy de Ndasd et Fogarasfld and Orsolya Kanizsai.[citation needed]
On 8 May 1575, Bthory and Ndasdy were married at the palace of Varann (today Vranov nad Topľou, Slovakia).[10] The marriage resulted in combined land ownership in both Transylvania and the Kingdom of Hungary.[10]
Ndasdy's wedding gift to Bthory was his household, Castle of Csejte (Čachtice),[10] situated in the Little Carpathians near Vg-Ujhely and Trencsn (present-day Nov Mesto nad Vhom and Trenčn, Slovakia).[citation needed] The castle had been bought by his mother in 1569 and given to Ndasdy, who transferred it to Elizabeth during their nuptials, together with the Csejte country house and seventeen adjacent villages.[citation needed]
Ferenc Ndasdy died on 4 January 1604 at the age of 48. Although the exact nature of the illness which led to his death is unknown, it seems to have started in 1601 and initially caused debilitating pain in his legs. From that time, he never fully recovered, and in 1603 became permanently disabled.[citation needed] He had been married to Bthory for 29 years. Before dying, Ndasdy entrusted his heirs and widow to Gyrgy Thurz, who would eventually lead the investigation into Bthory's crimes.[citation needed]
Between 1602 and 1604, after rumours of Bthory's atrocities had spread throughout the kingdom, Lutheran minister Istvn Magyari made complaints against her, both publicly and at the court in Vienna.[19] In 1610, Matthias II assigned Gyrgy Thurz, the Palatine of Hungary, to investigate. Thurz ordered two notaries, Andrs Keresztry and Mzes Czirky,[20] to collect evidence in March 1610.[21] By October 1610 they had collected 52 witness statements;[20] by 1611, that number had risen to over 300.
Bthory is said to have begun killing daughters of the lesser gentry, who were sent to her gynaeceum by their parents to learn courtly etiquette.[4] The use of needles was also mentioned by the collaborators in court. There were many suspected forms of torture carried out by Bthory.
Some witnesses named relatives who died while at the gynaeceum. Others reported having seen traces of torture on dead bodies, some of which were buried in graveyards, and others in unmarked locations.
On 13 December 1612, Nikola VI Zrinski confirmed the agreement with Thurz about the imprisonment of Bthory and distribution of the estate.[20] On New Year's Eve 1612, Thurz went to Csejte Castle and arrested Bthory along with four of her servants, who were accused of being her accomplices: Dorotya Semtsz, Ilona J, Katarna Benick and Jnos jvry ("Ibis" or Fick). According to Thurz's letter to his wife, his unannounced visit found one dead girl and another living "prey" girl in the castle,[20] but there is no evidence that they asked her what had happened to her. Although it is commonly believed that Bthory was caught in the act of torture, she was having dinner. Initially, Thurz made the declaration to Bthory's guests and villagers that he had caught her red-handed. However, she was arrested and detained prior to the discovery or presentation of the victims. It seems most likely that the claim of Thurz's discovering Bthory covered in blood has been the embellishment of fictionalized accounts.[22]
Thurz debated further proceedings with Bthory's son Paul and two of her sons-in-law, Nikola VI Zrinski and Gyrgy Drugeth.[20] Her family, which ruled Transylvania, sought to avoid the loss of Bthory's property which was at risk of being seized by the crown following a public scandal.[citation needed] Thurz, along with Paul and her two sons-in-law, originally planned for Bthory to be sent to a nunnery, but as accounts of her actions spread, they decided to keep her under strict house arrest.[23]
Most of the witnesses testified that they had heard the accusations from others, but did not see it themselves. The servants confessed under torture, which is not credible in contemporary proceedings. They were the king's witnesses, but they were executed.[24] Ilona J and Dorottya Szentes had their fingers torn out with a pair of red-hot pincers and were then burned alive. Due to his youth and the belief that he was less culpable, Jnos jvry was executed by a much less painful method: beheading. Afterwards, his body was burned on the same pyre as J and Szentes. Another servant, Erzsi Majorova, initially escaped capture but was burned alive after being apprehended. Katarna Benick received a life sentence after evidence showed that she'd been abused by the other women.
The accusations of murder were based on rumours. There is no document to prove that anyone in the area complained about the Countess. In this time period, if someone was harmed, or someone even stole a chicken, a letter of complaint was written.[5][7][25] Two trials were held in the wake of Bthory's arrest: the first was held on 2 January 1611, and the second on 7 January 1611.[26]
The highest number of victims cited during the trial of Bthory's accomplices was 650, but this number comes from the claim by a servant girl named Susannah that Jakab Szilvssy, Bthory's court official, had seen the figure in one of Bthory's private books. The book was never revealed and Szilvssy never mentioned it in his testimony.[27]
On 25 January 1611, Thurz wrote a letter to King Matthias describing that they had captured and confined Bthory to her castle. The palatine also coordinated the steps of the investigation with the political struggle with the Prince of Transylvania.[clarification needed] She was detained in the castle of Csejte for the remainder of her life, where she died at the age of 54. As Gyrgy Thurz wrote, Elizabeth Bthory was locked in a bricked room, but according to other sources (written documents from the visit of priests, July 1614), she was able to move freely and unhindered in the castle, more akin to house arrest.[28][29]
She wrote a will in September 1610, in which she left all current and future inheritance possessions to her children.[20] In the last month of 1610, she signed her arrangement, in which she distributed the estates, lands and possessions among her children.[30][8][contradictory] On the evening of 20 August 1614, Bthory complained to her bodyguard that her hands were cold, whereupon he replied "It's nothing, mistress. Just go lie down." She went to sleep and was found dead the following morning.[31] She was buried in the church of Csejte on 25 November 1614,[31] but according to some sources due to the villagers' uproar over having the Countess buried in their cemetery, her body was moved to her birth home at Ecsed, where it was interred at the Bthory family crypt.[32] The location of her body today is unknown but believed to be buried deep in the church area of the castle. The Csejte church and the castle of Csejte do not bear any markings of her possible grave.[citation needed]
Several authors, such as Lszl Nagy and Irma Szdeczky-Kardoss, have argued that Elizabeth Bthory was a victim of a conspiracy.[5][33] Nagy argued that the proceedings against Bthory were largely politically motivated, possibly due to her extensive wealth and ownership of large areas of land in Hungary, which increased after the death of her husband. The theory is consistent with Hungarian history at that time, which included religious and political conflicts, especially relating to the wars with the Ottoman Empire, the spread of Protestantism and the extension of Habsburg power over Hungary.[34] Moreover, Matthias owed a large debt to Bthory, which was cancelled after she was arrested.[2]
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