The Cutprice Guignol

The image is, arguably, one of the most iconic in the history of folklore and horror alike: the Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory bathing in the blood of one of the hundreds of servant girls she murdered, intent on using their gore to preserve her own youth and beauty. Sharing a bloodline with Vlad the Impaler and Dracula alike, this version of Báthory remains one of the most infamous female serial killers in history – and, with a claimed body count of more than 650 victims, one of the most prolific of all time, too.

But how accurate is this version of Báthory to the one who actually lived in 17th-century Hungary? Did Báthory commit hundreds of murders that went undetected for several years? Did she bathe in the blood of her victims? Did she, in fact, do any of it, or was she subject to an ill-supported attack intended to strip her of her property after the death of her husband? There’s a lot to get into with this story, but it’s a truly fascinating one, so I hope you’ll join me in a deep-dive into the myth of Elizabeth Báthory, and the truth of her alleged crimes (or as close as we can get to it, four hundred years later).

Erzsébet (not Elizabeth) Báthory was born in August 1560, a part of the Ecsed branch of the noble Báthory family; by the time she was just twelve, she would be engaged to the seventeen-year-old Ferenc Nádasdy. In 1573, the two were married, and Báthory moved to live with her new husband in Sárvár, in the then-Kingdom of Hungary.

Within three years of their wedding, Nádasdy, a keenly-skilled warrior, would leave his home to lead Hungarian troops as part of the ongoing Ottoman-Habsburg war. Báthory remained at their castle in Sárvár, managing her family’s various estates and properties in her husband’s absence. Before his death in 1604, on his limited visits to his wife from the front line, the couple would have around five children, though the exact number is difficult to parse based on surviving information.

In the very early years of the 1600s, the goings-on at Sárvár Castle began to attract attention from the local townsfolk – István Magyari, a local pastor, began to develop suspicions about a number of bodies of young servant girls that were being removed from the estate and buried in secret. Báthory claimed to him that the women had died from cholera (a common affliction at the time), and that their swift removal and burial was to keep the local populace from panic; however, Magyari publicly called for the exhumation of one of the more recently-deceased bodies removed from the castle, suspicious that cholera wasn’t the true cause of her death.

Báthory was able to avoid too much scrutiny for the accusation after writing to her husband, who returned to remonstrate with the court himself (likely through a generous financial donation to the council). During the year or so following her husband’s death, Báthory had surrounded herself with a small number of trusted servants – Dorotya Semtész, Ilona Jó, Katarína Benická, János Újváry, and, perhaps most significantly, Anna Darvolya (known as Darvulia). Darvulia had been implicated in the earlier accusations against Báthory brought by Magyari, and was referred to by local townsfolk as a “beast in a woman’s body” – rumours abounded that Darvulia was involved in and even instructing Báthory in the torture and murder of the young women who died in the castle. The vast majority of these women were young, unmarried servants, and their deaths (though attracting speculation in the local towns) drew little in the way of judicial interest. Báthory moved to live permanently in Castle Cjethe (which sits in modern-day Slovakia).

Offers of work at the Báthory estate were increasingly declined by local townsfolk, leaving Báthory with a dearth of would-be-victims. However, the stories of her brutality had not yet reached the upper echelons, and Báthory began running a gynaecium (a sort of finishing school for young, female members of the upper classes) in 1609, renewed suspicion began to surround her as wealthy families were not allowed to visit their daughters and nieces, and when a number of them went missing entirely.

During this time, Báthory took less precautions to disguise the torture carried out in Cjethe; both women who attended the gynaecium and household staff were seen bearing bruises, cuts, and other injuries – one story recounts a servant girl fleeing to the local town with a knife still stuck through her foot. Dogs recovered the bodies of several women and girls buried in shallow graves on the estate, once again indicated as victims of cholera. By early 1610, the entire population of the gynaecium had been wiped out – with Báthory claiming that one of her students had murdered the rest, before committing suicide herself. While the torture and apparent murder of household staff and other women lower on the class system had been contained mostly to rumour and warning, the death of noble women finally led to an investigation finally being launched into the goings-on in Cjethe Castle.

The investigation was led by György Thurzó, the palatine (a sort of ambassador of the king) of Hungary at the time – and, perhaps more significantly, a family friend to the Báthory clan. Nádasdy had even entrusted the wellbeing of his widow and children to Thurzó before his death – Erzsébet and Thurzó had even maintained a friendly personal relationship, attending the weddings of each other’s children and exchanging letters. Whether this personal relationship had an influence on proceedings – for better or worse – is something we’ll get into later.

Initial investigations proved relatively fruitless; more than thirty alleged witnesses were interviewed, but only one could recount seeing direct evidence of torture or abuse (the others having heard about it from separate sources). It wasn’t until December of 1610, when members of Báthory household staff dropped four bodies from the castle in the hopes of allowing wolves to destroy them, that authorities began closing in around Báthory and her accomplices (sans Darvulia, who had passed the year before) once and for all.

Some debate exists over the exact circumstances of the arrest of Báthory and her accomplices; some sources claim Thurzo caught her in the midst of torturing and murdering another victim, while others describe her eating dinner when he made his unannounced visit. Whatever the circumstances, the concern surrounding Báthory was enough that two trials would take place over the course of the next year – the first, in January, focusing on her four surviving accomplices, Dorotya Semtész, Ilona Jó, Katarína Benická, and János Újváry.

It was via the testimony of these four accomplices that much of the legend surrounding the countess began to take shape: they described between 30-50 murders taking place across her various estates, as well as various forms of torture, often taking place in dedicated rooms put aside for the acts. Amongst the forms of torture and murder described were needles pushed beneath the fingernails of the victims, victims who were forced to enter freezing-cold rivers or were doused in cold water until they froze to death, and vicious beatings, carried out by both Báthory and her accomplices.

While all but one of Báthory’s accomplices were put to death (with Katarína Benická avoiding execution due to her apparent abuse by the others involved in the crimes), Báthory herself was placed under a kind of house arrest. She began an ardent letter-writing campaign to try and earn her freedom, and insist on her innocence despite the testimonies of her alleged accomplices. In July 1611, more than two hundred witnesses gave evidence in the case against Báthory – it was here that the number of Báthory’s murders was given at over 600, a claim from a servant who assured the court she had seen a ledger keeping count of the deaths across her properties (which was never recovered). Thurzó, intent on protecting what little remained of the reputation of his one-time friends, kept her from having to appear in court, and she was functionally sentenced to house arrest for the rest of her life. After leaving her remaining properties to her children, she died in July 1614.

But the case of Erzsébet Báthory has been subject to much historiographical debate in the centuries since her death – as well as some dramatic embellishments. First off, likely the most pressing question: did she really commit the murders she was accused of?

Dr Irma Szádeczky-Kardoss is amongst those who challenged the belief that Báthory was guilty of the crimes attributed to her. She describes the judicial process as little more than “show trials”, suggesting that rumours about the countess had been spread amongst the townsfolk prior to their being called to give evidence, and were based on hearsay as opposed to eyewitness accounts. Szádeczky-Kardoss also suggests that many of the reported deaths aligned with plague outbreaks in the area, and some of the methods of torture described – such as submersion in cold water and inserting needles beneath fingernails to treat boils – were actually folk medical treatments guided by the misrepresented midwife Darvulia.

There’s also the matter of the evidence given by the accomplices to consider; it’s widely accepted that the accomplices gave their evidence after torture at the hands of the judicial system, an approach which was seen as relatively normal in Hungary at the time. In most modern judicial systems, testimony given under torture is not admissible as evidence, and forensic, physical evidence was thin on the ground due to time these crimes took place. Less than a third of the people who gave evidence against Báthory and her accomplices claimed to have directly witnessed a crime or the result of it, with “common knowledge” allowed as a form of evidence at the time.

But, if Bathory and her accomplices were innocent, what was the purpose of accusing her of such heinous crimes? Szádeczky-Kardoss argued that the case against Báthory was motivated by Thurzó’s desire to enshrine his family in a position of significant power in Hungary at the time, with the Báthory family offering the most significant competition to his political goals. László Nagy, another historian, made the case that the King at the time owed Báthory a significant amount of money, and disgracing her would render his debt irrelevant. Some commentators have also suggested that Báthory’s Protestantism served as a motive for the accusations, due to tensions between Catholics and Protestants in the country at the time – a protestant commanding the power, wealth, and property that Báthory did may have caused waves in the wider politic community in Hungary at the time.

With all that said – did, on a weighing-up of the evidence we have, Báthory do what she was accused of? In all the reading I’ve done on this topic in the last couple of weeks, I lean towards “yes, with a but”. I sincerely doubt that the number of her victims reached over 600, as is often quoted, but it’s clear that a not-insignificant number of women who shared striking similarities – in the age and marital status – died and were otherwise injured at her various estates. While the evidence extracted from her accomplices was likely done so via torture, their various testimonies were strikingly similar, both with regards to the number of victims and the methods of torture.

With regards to claims that Thurzó may have been manipulating proceedings to his own ends, personal letters to his wife describe at least some of the violence he was witness to at Báthory’s estate, and his apparent attempts to protect her from appearing in public at her trial could speak to his dedication to the family after his promise to her late husband. I could also not find a specific source that explained the origins of the debts that the King owed to Báthory, though it is quoted by many historians. The previous attempts by the local pastor to exhume the bodies of some of Báthory’s alleged early victims suggests that suspicion around her stretched back further than as a tool for political machination, and around eighty witnesses did testify to seeing Báthory and her accomplices commit these crimes, many of them members of her household at one point.

Fundamentally, while I think this case is much more easily picked apart via a modern lens, due to the weight given to witness testimony over forensic and physical evidence in 17th-century Hungary, the evidence we have access to seems to indicate that Báthory committed at least a number of the crimes she was accused of. Which brings me to the next question: why?

Báthory maintained her innocence even after her imprisonment, so the truth behind her motivations is likely something we’ll never have a clear idea of. However, there seem to be a number of factors that could have influenced the violence she committed – including Báthory’s own upbringing. Violent public executions were commonplace in Hungary during her childhood, and stories tell of a young Báthory witnessing a man being stitched into a horse while still alive – her husband was well-known for the exceptional violence he meted out against his enemies, including, allegedly, using their severed heads to play kickball with. In the initial accusations against Báthory in the early 1600s, there were suggestions that he had guided her in methods of torture against household staff.

She was just 13 when she married Ferenc, and no laws protected her from violence within her marriage – it seems at least possible she was subject to abuse from Ferenc as a child. After a revolution in 1514, the peasant class in Hungary were functionally viewed as the property of the landowner, little more than chattel with which they could do what they wanted, and the dehumanization of the lower classes combined with the violence Báthory had witnessed could, feasibly, have fed into the torture and murder she meted out to so many young women. To be clear, I say all of this not to justify or excuse what Báthory is accused of having done, but to try and contextualize it based on the evidence we have access to.

But, you’ll notice, there’s a non-insignificant gap between the historical documentation of Báthory and her crimes, and the stories that have come to dominate conversation around her in the modern day. So, how exactly did the image of the blood-bathing countess intent on preserving her youth and beauty come from?

The earliest example of this trope came more than a century after her death, in the first written record of the case, Historia Tragica by László Turóczi, who reported that Báthory bathed in the blood of her victims to preserve her looks; soon, the detail gained traction and became an accepted part of the case, which would develop into a cautionary tale about the danger of vanity and self-obsession in Europe across the following centuries.

It wasn’t until 1897, upon the release and commercial success of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, that Báthory’s story began to be re-interpreted through the lens of vampire folklore (some historians have argued that Báthory was actually an influence on the iconic Count, and, while there are some superficial connections between them, Elizabeth Miller does a great job dismantling them). Following the success of the Hammer Horror Dracula film series, the studio produced Countess Dracula, which drew on the historiography and mythology surrounding Báthory and made the first direct connection between Báthory and Dracula. Since then, Báthory’s story has served as the basis for a number of fictional re-interpretations across various mediums, perhaps most notably Juraj Jakubisko’s 2008 film Bathory, which has been pointed to by some scholars as the reason for a renewed interest in the case and Báthory’s actual guilt.

In my view, the enduring interest in Báthory spans a number of influences; perhaps most obviously the novelty value that her case presents, as a female serial killer, especially one who displayed such cruelty and savagery to other women. The myths that have been built from her story serve a purpose in bolstering misogynistic myths about the dangers of vanity in women and widen generational divides between young women and older women, by framing the older woman as a threat due to her self-obsession. While Vlad the Impaler and Báthory are often (erroneously) mentioned in the same breath, Vlad the Impaler committed most of his acts of violence against military or political enemies; while the brutality was extreme, there at least seemed to be some purpose to the murders he committed; Báthory, on the other hand, seemed to kill for the sake of killing, based on the evidence that survives from her case. This motivation leaves much room for creative interpretation, as displayed by the numerous adaptations of her history, and, while debates will no doubt long continue about the veracity of the charges against her, Erzsébet Báthory as a historical and mythological figure is unlikely to go anywhere any time soon.

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Sources and Further Reading

Infamous Lady: The True Story of Countess Erzsébet Báthory by Kimberly L. Craft

The Private Letters of Countess Erzsébet Báthory by Kimberly L. Craft

The Bloody Countess?: An Examination of the Life and Trial of Erzsébet Báthory by Dr. Irma Szádeczky-Kardoss

Murderesses in German Writing, 1720–1860: Heroines of Horror by Susanne Kord

Bram Stoker, Elizabeth Bathory, and Dracula by Susan Miller

(header image via Wikipedia)