BÁTHORY, Erzsebet






Born in 1560, Erzsebet (or Elizabeth) Báthory was the daughter of an aristocratic soldier and the sister of Poland’s reigning king. Her family, in fact, was one of the oldest noble houses in Hungary, its crest bearing the draconic symbol incorporated by King Sigismund into the Order of the Dragon.





The Báthory clan included knights and judges, bishops, cardinals, and kings, but it had fallen into decadence by the mid-16th century, the
royal bloodline marred by incest and epilepsy, with later family ranks including alcoholics, murderers and sadists, homosexuals (considered criminally deviant at the time) and Satanists.







Though physically beautiful, Erzsebet was clearly the product of polluted genetics and a twisted upbringing.
Throughout her life, she was subject to blinding
headaches and fainting seizures—probably epileptic in nature—which superstitious family members diagnosed as demonic possession. Raised on the Báthory estate at the foot of the brooding Carpathian Mountains, Erzsebet was introduced to devil worship in adolescence by
one of her Satanist uncles. 0Her favorite aunt, one of Hungary’s most notorious lesbians, taught Erzsebet the pleasures of flagellation(a masochistic or sadistic act in which the participants receive erotic stimulation from whipping or being whipped) and other perversions, but young Erzsebet always believed that where pain was concerned, it was better to give than to receive.






When Erzsebet was barely 11, her parents contracted her future marriage to Count Ferencz Nadasdy, an aris-tocratic warrior. Their wedding was postponed until
Erzsebet turned 15, finally solemnized on May 5, 1575. The bride retained her maiden name as a sign that her family possessed greater status than Nadasdy’s clan. The newlyweds settled at Csejthe Castle, in north-western Hungary, but Count Nadasdy also maintained other palatial homes around the country, each complete
with a dungeon and torture chamber specially designed to meet Erzsebet’s needs.






Nadasdy was frequently absent for weeks or months at a time, leaving his bride alone and bored, to find her own diversions.
Erzsebetdabbled in alchemy, indulged her sexual quirks with men and women alike, changed clothes and jewelry five or six times a day, and admired herself in full-length mirrors by the hour.





Above all else, when she was angry, tense, or simply bored, the countess tortured servant girls for sport.




One major source of irritation in the early years of
marriage was Erzsebet’s mother-in-law. Eager for
grandchildren, Nadasdy’s mother nagged Erzsebet
incessantly over her failure to conceive. Erzsebet would finally bear children after a decade of marriage, but she felt no maternal urges in her late teens and early twenties.




Young women on her household staff soon came to dread the visits of Nadasdy’s mother, knowing thatanother round of brutal assaults would inevitably fol-low the old lady’s departure.
Where torture was concerned, the bisexual countess possessed a ferocious imagination.






Some of her tricks were learned in childhood,
and others were picked from Nadasdy’s experience battling the Turks, but she
also contrived techniques of her own.
Pins and needles were favorite tricks of the trade, piercing the lips and nipples of her victims, sometimes ramming needles beneath their fingernails.






“The little slut!” she would sneer, as her captive writhed in pain. “If it hurts, she’s only got to take them out herself.”
Erzsebet also enjoyed biting her victims on the cheeks, breasts, and elsewhere, drawing blood with her teeth. Other captives were stripped, smeared with honey, and exposed to the
attacks of ants and bees.






Count Nadasdy reportedly joined Erzsebet in some of the torture sessions, but over time he came to fear his wife, spending more and more time on the road or in the arms of his mistress. When he finally died in 1600 or 1604 (accounts vary), Erzsebet lost all restraint, devoting herself full time to the torment and sexual degradation
of younger women.





In short order, she broadened her scope from
the family staff to include nubile strangers. Trusted employees scoured the coun-tryside for fresh prey, luring peasant girls with offers of
employment, resorting to drugs or brute force as perva-sive rumors thinned the ranks of willing recruits.








None who entered Erzsebet’s service ever escaped alive, but peasants had few legal rights in those days, and a noble-woman was not faulted by her peers if “discipline” around the house got out of hand.








By her early forties, Erzsebet Báthory presided over a miniature holocaust of her own design. Abetted by her aging nurse, Ilona Joo, and procuress Doratta Szentes— aka “Dorka”—Erzsebet ravaged the countryside, claiming peasant victims at will. She carried special silver
pincers, designed for ripping flesh, but she was also comfortable with pins and needles, branding irons and red-hot pokers, whips and scissors . . . almost anything at all.






Household accomplices would strip her victims,
holding them down while Erzsebet tore their breasts to shreds or burned their vaginas with a candle flame, sometimes biting great chunks of flesh from their faces and bodies.







One victim was forced to cook and eat a
strip of her own flesh, while others were doused with cold water and left to freeze in the snow. Sometimes, Erzsebet would jerk a victim’s mouth open with such force that the cheeks ripped apart.




On other occasions, servants handled the dirty work, while Erzsebet paced the sidelines, shouting, “More! More still! Harder
still!” until overwhelmed with excitement, she fainted into unconsciousness on the floor.








One special “toy” of Erzsebet’s was a cylindrical
cage, constructed with long spikes inside.
A naked girl was forced into the cage, then hoisted several feet off the floor by means of a pulley.
Erzsebet or one of her servants would circle the cage with a red-hot poker, jabbing at the girl and forcing her against the sharp spikes as she tried to escape.





Whether she cast herself in the role of an observer or active participant, Erzsebet was always good for a running commentary of suggestions and sick “jokes,” lapsing into crude obscenities and incoherent babble as the night wore on.

.

She's a witch! See her stupid face.

*

Mehn that's one sadistic Bitch

Báthory and four of her servants were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and women between 1590 and 1610.Her servants were put on trial and convicted, whereas Báthory was confined to her home.She was imprisoned within Castle of Csejte in December 1610.





In 1989, writer Michael Farin stated the accusations against Báthory 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.





The charges leveled against Báthory have also been described as a witch-hunt.In a 2018 article for Przegląd Nauk Historycznych (Historical Science Review) Aleksandra Bartosiewicz stated that when Báthory was persecuted, 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 neighbors, including the Habsburg empire.






Legends describing Báthory's 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.






Stories about Báthory quickly became part of national folklore.Many insist she inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), although Stoker's notes on the novel provide no direct evidence to support this hypothesis.



Nicknames and literary epithets attributed to her include The Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.


Báthory has been labelled by Guinness World Records as the most prolific female murderer, though the number of her victims is debated.



She was featured as a fictional character in the
Tv series Hellboy: Blood and Iron.