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Elizabeth Báthory (married ''Elizabeth Nádasdy'', ''Alžbeta Bátoriová-Nádašdy'' in Slovak , ''Báthory Erzsébet'' in Hungarian , August 7 ?, 1560 - August 21 , 1614 ), the '''Bloody Lady of Čachtice''', was a Hungarian Countess . She lived in the Csejte (''Čachtice'' in Slovak) castle near Trenčín, in present-day Slovakia then Hungary. She is considered the most famous Serial Killer in Slovak and Hungarian history as well as the world's most prolific mass murderer (according to GWR ). She spent most of her life at the Čachtice Castle . She and her alleged four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing numerous girls and young women (20 - 2000 victims, depending on the source. It is rumoured that she documented each death in her diary, totalling to 612 entries). In 1610 , she was imprisoned in solitary confinement, where she stayed until her death four years later. Her nobility permitted her to avoid an immediate execution. However, her alleged collaborators were executed. Various legends about her life, including the idea that she bathed in or drank the blood of servant girls, are thought by some to have been the origin of numerous Vampire myths, the Dracula story, and the Trope of the sexually Sadistic vampiress in particular. She has a few historical nicknames, "The Blood Countess" and "Countess Dracula" because she was a possible model for Bram Stoker's vampire character. THE BáTHORY LINEAGE The ancestors of Elizabeth (the Gutkeled clan) came to the Hungarian Kingdom in the mid- 11th Century . They held power in what is now Poland , Hungary , Slovakia , and Transylvania . The Gutkeled clan emerged to assume a role of relative eminence by the early 13th Century and the name Báthory (according to one of their estates Báthor Nyírbátor meaning ''"valiant"'') was assumed by that sub-family in 1279. Their power peaked during the mid- 16th Century , and was virtually gone by 1658 . With the death of the wife of György Rákóczi II (Zsófia Báthory), they died out in 1680 . Elizabeth's parents were from the two branches of the Báthory family (Báthory of Ecsed and Báthory of Somlyó) and the brother of Elizabeth’s mother was the Polish king István Báthory . LIFE She was born in Nyírbátor in present-day Hungary on August 7 1560 and died on August 21 1614 in Čachtice in present-day Slovakia . She spent her childhood at the Ecsed Castle; details from this period are unknown. At the age of 11 she was forced to become engaged with the noble and successful warrior Ferenc Nádasdy and moved to the Nádasdy Castle in Sárvár . In 1575 , she married Nádasdy in Vranov Nad Topľou , who in 1578 became the chief commander of Hungarian troops in their war against the Turks. He was considered a very brave, but also very cruel person. The Turks feared him and called him the Black Beg. Nádasdy’s wedding gift to Elizabeth was his home, the Čachtice Castle (situated in the Carpathians in present-day western Slovakia near Trenčín , then part of the Kingdom Of Hungary ) together with the Čachtice country-house and seventeen adjacent villages. The castle itself was surrounded by a peasant village and rolling agricultural lands, interspersed with outcroppings of the Carpathian Mountains. In 1602 , Elizabeth’s husband definitively bought the castle from the emperor Rudolf II , so that it became a property of the Nádasdys. Since battles with the Turks occupied her husband, Elizabeth became the lady of the castle. At this time she was able to read and write in four languages. Elizabeth had six children. Two of them died at an early age:
Her husband died in either 1602 or 1604 . It is alleged that Elizabeth started to kill young women between the years 1585 and 1610 , and that her husband and her relatives knew about her sadistic inclination, but they did not directly intervene. While her husband lived, she apparently kept her activities to a moderate level, but upon his death any restraints he may have imposed on her (or she on herself) were completely removed. It is said that people living around her castle hated her so much that she only left the castle under an armed escort. However, she did torture some girls at her properties in Sárvár and Keresztúr . Her possible victims were initially local female peasants, many of which were lured to Cachtice by offers of well-paid work. However, when stories spread of the countess's inclinations, the supply of new maids began to dwindle. At this point, she may have begun to kill daughters of lower gentry, who were sent to her castle by their parents to learn noble manners. In the early 17th Century , parents of substantial position often wished their daughters to be educated in the social graces and etiquette. As rumours spread further throughout the Hungarian Kingdom, she may have had girls kidnapped both locally and from more distant areas. After the parish priest of Čachtice and the monks of the relatively nearby Vienna had lodged several complaints with the ruling class in Vienna about cries from the castle, the new emperor Matthias II assigned Juraj Thurzo , the Palatine of Hungary, to investigate these complaints. Thurzo and his men invaded Čachtice in the morning of December 29 1610 and caught Elizabeth in the act in the Čachtice country-house; she was torturing several girls - one of them had only just died. She and four collaborators were charged with sadistic torture, as well as mass murder. Despite the overwhelming evidence found by investigators, Elizabeth herself was not brought to trial. Her son Paul and his tutor Megyery raised valid concerns that, apart from the public scandal and family disgrace, by law the family inheritance would go to the crown. While she was investigated in absentia, Elizabeth was kept under tight house arrest and waged a spirited defense by a furious stream of letters. The outcome was inevitable. The bloody countess was bricked up in her own private chamber of her castle, kept alive only by food poked through a slit in the door, and died there on August 21 1614 . Further details regarding her collaborators are recorded below. GUILT OR INNOCENCE More than 300 people were interrogated before her death between 1611 and 1614 . Despite several interventions by the Hungarian king, a regular trial never took place and the case remained open. The reason for this might have been that the palatine Thurzo did not want a trial against a member of the high gentry (with which he was reproached at the time). Moreover, Elizabeth’s nephew Gabriel Báthory was the ruler of Transylvania and Thurzo did not want to get into troubles with Transylvania. And finally, Thurzo’s properties were adjacent to those of Elizabeth and Thurzo was interested in her properties. Some sources mention the possibility that she was falsely convicted by the political opponents of the family, mainly because the Báthory family owned large areas of land and were wealthy. The existing historical documents show lack of investigation, omitted evidence and decisions kept in tight local political circles. Some of the most dramatic charges against her, that of Satanism and vampirism, are thought to have been either deliberate falsehoods or folklore that grew up around a disliked figure. Some people claim that the vampire legends could have been exaggerations of actual medical help provided for peasants; at that age it was very unusual that a noble cared about the health of her servants, and bloodletting was practiced by medical authorities for many years. The Hungarian researcher conducted by Palatine Juraj Thurzo from Western Hungary (man of king Matthias II of Hungary). The goal was to Defame Prince Gábor Báthori of Transylvania, the brother of Elizabeth, who did not want to recognize the supremacy of Catholic Habsburgs over his small, mainly Protestant country. Three hundred Witness es were summoned during the Trial , but no injured, or tortured people, and no Eyewitness es were found. Lacking sufficient Proof , the palatine postponed the passing of a Sentence , until urged by the emperor himself to do something and conclude the proceedings. Ms. Szádeczky-Kardoss writes that actually not Erzsébet in person, but her servants treated a number of people, including young girls, of different Disease s, with Surgical Tweezers , Hoe s and Protractor s specific to the period ( Lancing Of Abscesses and Dirty Wound s with Hot Iron ; alternating hot and cold baths, Phlebotomy , etc.) MOTIVES Her deviation might have had genetic reasons, because many of both her father’s and her mother’s ancestors were very brutal individuals (e.g. the Transylvanian ruler Zsigmond Báthory who liked to have his retainers killed). Alternatively, it is believed that the Báthory family was Inbred and that this may have helped cause various Psychotic disorders that the family was known to have. Only later legends say that she was killing the girls in order to bathe in their blood and, thus, stay forever young or improve her complexion. It is also possible that she was indeed guilty, but her reign of terror was politically or financially motivated. Peasant women were considered but a natural resource in her time, and she may very well have simply had a ill-fated scheme to get back at the corrupt enemies of her family who wouldn't pay her back what she was owed. It should be noted, however, that brutality was relatively widespread at the time. People arrested under suspicion of crimes and sometimes even witnesses were tortured for their confessions, and punishment of the poor or of political enemies was often death. COLLABORATORS A shadowy figure named Anna Darvulia, a suspected local witch that dabbled in black magic and satanic ritual, is rumoured to have influenced much of Elizabeth's early sadistic career, but apparently died before the major events of Elizabeth's reign of terror commenced. Elizabeth's main collaborators after Anna's death were her maids
Except for Katarína, they were all executed at Bytča on January 7 1611 . Katarína's guilt could not be proven, and according to McNally's sources from recorded testimony by all witnesses, she seems to have been dominated and bullied by the other executed women. Two of the women had their extremities hacked off before being thrown onto a blazing fire, while Fickó, whose guilt was deemed the lesser, had the mercy of being beheaded before being consigned to the flames. A public scaffold was erected near the castle to show the public that justice had been done. The confessions and testimony against Báthory were taken under torture by Thurzo. Her behavior cannot be reduced to merely "genetic" reasons. Though her family was indeed inbred, as were a plethora of aristocratic families in Europe, and she was psychotic, she clearly learned these techniques, as McNally and Radu Florescu imply, from her husband. His torturous tactics aimed at Turkish slaves and prisoners of war earned him the title "The Black Knight." LEGENDS The following are some of the best known legends about Elizabeth Báthory. Although some are partly based on statements made by those interrogated after 1610, their truthfulness cannot be verified. Torture While interrogating Turk s, her husband at one time employed articulated claw-like pincers of Silver which, when fastened to a whip, would tear and rip the flesh to such an obscene degree that he soon abandoned the apparatus in disgust and left it at the castle. Báthory's aunt had introduced her to the practice of Flagellation , and she equipped herself with her husband's silver claws for use on Slavic debtors and other victims. She preferred to whip her subjects on the front of their nude bodies rather than their backs, so that she could watch their faces contort in horror at their fate. Báthory used other methods of torture as well, often as punishments for servants who incurred her displeasure. Sticking pins under the fingernails of servants, covering young women in honey and leaving them to be stung to death by bees, or dousing naked victims in cold water during the harshest parts of the winter until they froze to death were among the tortures rumored to have taken place at her castle. Other legends mention Báthory's use of the Iron Maiden . Many works of fiction portray the countess as Bisexual or Lesbian , drawing on the belief that her victims were exclusively women. It is unclear whether her sadism had any sexual component, nor is it confirmed that she only killed women. Bloodbath Elizabeth Báthory, described as a beauty by her contemporaries, is believed to have been exceedingly vain and obsessed with preserving her youth. One day, a servant girl pulled the Countess's hair while arranging it, and Báthory slapped her so hard her nose bled. She believed that the servant's blood had made her skin young and fresh again, and so she conceived the idea of bathing in blood as a magical restorative. Her reputation as the "Blood Countess" arose in large part from stories of servants and virgin peasant girls strung upside down and drained of their blood to provide Báthory with her youth serum. The story of the blood baths is one of the most enduring parts of Báthory's legend and appears in most fictional works inspired by it. IN POPULAR CULTURE In film There have been several movies about or inspired by Elizabeth Báthory:
In music
In fiction
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