Countess Elizabeth Báthory – she was said to be so evil that villagers kept their daughters in hiding for fear that Elizabeth would take them. Her gruesome activities even earned her such names as “the Infamous Lady” and “the Blood Countess.” This is her story.
Who is Erzsebet Báthory?
Erzsébet Báthory, was born in 1560 to one of the most powerful Protestant families in Hungary at the time. She was the daughter of Baron George Báthory and Baroness Anna Báthory, who were both Báthorys by birth. Possibly stemming from inbreeding within her family, it is said that from an early age Elizabeth suffered from seizures, loss of control, and fits of rage.
When she was 11 or 12 Elizabeth was betrothed to Ferenc Nádasdy of another aristocratic Hungarian family, but a year or two later she had a baby by a lower-order lover. Nádasdy was reported to have had him castrated and then torn to pieces by dogs. The child, a daughter, was quietly hidden from view and Elizabeth and Nádasdy were married in 1575 when she was 14. Because Elizabeth socially outranked her husband, she kept the surname Bathory, which he added to his own. The young couple lived in the Nádasdy castles in Hungary at Sárvár and Csetje (now in Slovakia), but Ferenc was an ambitious soldier and was often away. Elizabeth ran the estates, took various lovers and bore her husband four children. She was 43 when he died in 1604.
Horrible Hobby: Blood Bathing and torturing virgin girls
Legend has it that one day an attendant girl was brushing Elizabeth’s hair when she accidentally pulled too hard and it tugged on a snag in her hair. The countess erupted in anger, jumping up and striking the girl with the back of her hand. The strike was so hard that it made the girl bleed and some of that blood was left on Elizabeth’s hand. Later that night, Elizabeth noticed that the skin on her hand where the blood had been looked more youthful than she had seen it in many years. This gave her the idea that if such a small amount of blood could make her hand look so young, then more could restore youthfulness to her whole body. It’s said that this is when the madness began and Elizabeth started to bathe in the blood of virgin girls.
Young women began to disappear from villages near and far, as well as children. Unhappy girls were lured to the castle with the prospect that they would find work there but were never seen again. When they arrived, they were locked up in a cellar as they awaited torture. Elizabeth carried out much of the torture herself, often beating the girls to death.
Sometimes she would sew a girl’s mouth shut, force her to eat her own flesh, or burn her genitals. When she was too sick to get out of bed to beat them, Elizabeth would order her servants to bring up a girl to her quarters where she would bite their faces and shoulders. In other instances, she would stick needles underneath the girl’s fingertips before cutting off the fingers of those who tried to take them out. Soon Elizabeth began to run out of young women, because she had either already taken them, or the villagers had started to hide their daughters out of fear that she would take them. This is when the countess began to resort to noble girls, a decision that would ultimately lead to her demise.
And the end for the blood countess
After the murder of one noble girl in 1609, which Elizabeth tried to stage as a suicide, the authorities finally decided to act. During a night raid, officials searched the castle and discovered the dead bodies of young girls everywhere they looked.
Elizabeth was taken to trial and many testified against her, including her servants as well as survivors.
Finally, after hearing countless testimonies of the appalling activities that went on behind the castle’s walls, her servants were sentenced to death, but Elizabeth was imprisoned for life in a room in her own castle that was boarded up with tiny slits for food and air. After her death, Countess Elizabeth Báthory went down in history as one of the most evil women to ever have walked the planet.
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Video source: Biographics
