Infamous Lady: The True Story of Countess Erzsébet Báthory

by Craft, Kimberly

  On April 17, 1605, Erzsébet’s eldest daughter, Anna Nádasdy, married Count Miklós Zrínyi at Csepreg, a town not far from Sárvár. A fragment of a letter from Anna to her mother survives, written December 22, 1605. Anna writes about life with her new husband, Count Zrínyi, at his castle in Csáktornya (Cakovec, now in Croatia). The letter is polite and even has a spontaenous postscript, rather rare in those times, indicating intimacy. She writes:

  Thank God we arrived easily, and our health, happily, is in order. My lord, my husband, came[a distance] across, and we are all in good mood and health. Only his hand [was hurt], as he fell from the act. But it is nothing too serious; the hand will soon be in order. Regarding my duties, I will listen, obey, and do what they say. Do not worry about me. Everything is fine with us, and his family respects me. May God grant happiness.

  Your loyal servant and sister, Anna Nádasdy

  P.S. I sent you and my beloved brother a basket of figs (clams?). I would have sent you more, but that’s all we received from the sea.

  Before Ferenc’ death, Countess Erzsébet had been moving about the various castles and manor homes under her control to settle administrative matters, conduct inspections, and host social affairs. It appears that when not at war, Ferenc preferred coming back to his boyhood home at Sárvár, while Erzsébet spent increasingly more time in the countryside at the other castles and manor homes, particularly at Csejthe. Located in what is today Western Slovakia, Csejthe Castle was a 13th-century fortification situated on a hill that came with a fiefdom of 17 villages. The Nádasdy family acquired the property in 1569 and, as mentioned, Ferenc received it as a wedding gift from his mother before giving it, in turn, to Erzsébet. He later redeemed the property in 1602 from the Emperor for 5,000 forints, thus securing permanent title for her. In time, it would become the site of her gruesome murders and, ultimately, the final prison of Lady Erzsébet.

  It is likely that Erzsébet Báthory was never completely well-received, or well-liked, at Sárvár. Her son Pál was entrusted to a tutor and governor there, a squire named Imre Megyeri (or Megyery), nicknamed “Red.” Megyeri would later be appointed Pál’s legal guardian after his father’s death and during the Countess’ legal proceedings. Magyeri clearly disliked the Countess, ultimately filing formal charges against her with the king for her alleged torturing and murdering of servants. She certainly had no great affection for him either (according to witnesses, he appeared on the receiving end of her “evil spells” and even a plot to poison him). In addition, Erzsébet began to clash with the local clergy. It is clear that by the 1590’s, something very unusual was going on not only at Sárvár but also at the other Nádasdy estates that the Countess periodically visited, including Beckó (Beckov), Keresztúr, Csejthe, Kosztolány, and the manor in Vienna.

  11

  STRANGE GOINGS ON (1585-1604)

  At first, no one seemed to notice anything unusual. A young servant girl died suddenly in the night in the women’s section of Castle Sárvár. Her body was placed in a casket, and the local pastor, István Magyari, was summoned. When he arrived, he was a little surprised to find that the girl had already been placed into the box with the lid sealed. Ordinarily, he would have expected to find her lying out on a bed. The Countess quietly took him aside.

  “I’m afraid that we have a case of cholera on our hands,” she confided. “I don’t want to alarm the other servants or create a panic in town.” The pastor nodded quickly. These things happened, even in a wealthy household.

  The casket was brought out and loaded onto a wagon at the gates, where it was met by the pastor and a group of seminary students. A few servants nearby glanced up from their work as the students opened their hymnals and began singing funeral hymns. The little procession made its way out of the estate towards the cemetery.

  Inside Castle Sárvár, however, the female staff members were unusually quiet that day. They looked around nervously and, when the Countess walked past, immediately lowered their heads or moved quickly out of her way. When no one was in sight, they whispered incessantly.

  . . . . .

  In his role as Castellan (Warden) of Sárvár, Benedek Bicsérdy was in charge of estate security, administration, serving as deputy assistant in dispute settlements, and overseeing the household staff. Bicsérdy was apparently close to both Ferenc and Erzsébet Nádasdy: he even named his own children after both Lord and Lady as well as the various Nádasdy children.

  But something seemed rather unusual about this particular request.

  The Countess took him aside and motioned to a door that led to a series of inner rooms.

  “Post an armed guard here,” she ordered. “Inform the staff. I do not want anyone going in there without my express permission.”

  “Yes, Ladyship.”

  Her hand suddenly tightened on his wrist. Surprised, he looked into her eyes, suddenly black with intensity.

  “Do you understand, Benedek?”

  “Yes, Ladyship,” he said again.

  Her hand relaxed.

  “Good,” she said as she walked away. “Do not disappoint me.”

  . . . . .

  The Sárvár clergy was again summoned. Pastor Magyari was unable to attend that day and so the assistant pastor, Michael Zvonaric (Hung.: Mihály Varga Zvonarics), took the call. Servants had already brought up a casket to the church when he arrived, this one a bit larger than usual. Zvonaric asked the men to wait a moment. Rumors had already gone around that three girls had been nailed inside. Asking the servants to wait, he went to the castle to find the Lady.

  “Ladyship, may I ask why there are three bodies in a single casket?”

  Countess Erzsébet looked somewhat miffed by his question.

  “There are only two,” she said evenly. “You may bury them together in one grave site.”

  He pressed further.

  “But what happened to them? Why did all three die together so quickly—one after the other?”

  To this, she repeated, “There are only two. One had already died and the other was near death, and so we waited to put them together into a single coffin. If two coffins had been brought out one after the other, it would have caused even more gossip.”

  Later, the belfry master, who had been listening, took the young minister aside.

  “Father,” he said quietly, “It’s best not to say anything or question the Lady about these things.”

  When Zvonaric went to protest, the belfry master warned, “It will go badly for the servants if you do.”

  . . . . .

  What began as an isolated incident slowly turned into an ever-increasing stream of dead bodies that began to follow Countess Báthory wherever she went. In the preliminary investigation against the Countess that took place in October of 1610, the first deposed witness was Sárvár Castellan, Benedek Bicsérdy. By the time of this inquest, he stated that he knew of at least 175 girls and women who had died. He knew nothing regarding how they died, however, because “unless she called for him, he was not permitted to go into the house of the Lady.” Once, however, he did glimpse a bloodstain on one of the walls, and said that when he walked the outside of the castle, he could hear the “noises of a lashing from inside…through the walls.” He knew of beatings that would sometimes go on for six or more hours. The Lady kept a series of inner rooms under guard where “the tortured people were kept hidden.”

  If Bicsérdy’s estimate of the death toll seemed high, another confirmed: Baltazar Poby (also sp. Balthasar Poky), another man who had served as Castellan at Sárvár, testified that he had heard the number of victims, dead from the after-effects of torture, actually numbered over 200, “if not already amounting to nearly three hundred.”

  Other servants, nobles, clergy and townspeople from Sárvár and the surrounding areas would come forth. They all said the same thing: burials and funerals took place at an alarming rate there; the dead were almost always young servant girls; access was forbidden to a certain part of the estate under heavy guard; and,
although no one actually saw much of anything, all had heard tales that these girls died from torture.

  Another witness, Gergely Balás (Gregor Balasz), also agreed that the bodies of girls were taken out by cart, accompanied by clergy members singing funeral songs, but did not know how they had died.

  Rev. Michael Zvonaric claimed that when the Lady was in the house, it was not possible to see anything unusual since the staff had been highly warned not to enter certain rooms. One entrance, in particular, was always highly guarded by a man named Drabont, and that no one could enter without permission. Somewhere behind there was an inner, secret room, however, and he’d heard from servants that girls were tortured in there. He himself saw nothing, though.

  Evidently, the Countess was meticulous in covering her tracks. Benedek Bicsérdy said that, when he was called, everything had already been cleaned up by the time he entered the secret areas. Michael Zvonaric agreed that if he, or someone else, went into the Lady’s house, “everything was cleaned and there was nothing to see. She demanded great care to be taken by her people.”

  The death of a few staff members in and of itself was not unusual in a time when disease and poor hygiene claimed its daily share of victims, even in a wealthy household. At first, no one seemed to notice a few dead girls. The ordinary answer was that these poor souls had succumbed to cholera—quite common at the time—and that their hasty burial, with closed coffin, was performed so as not to create a panic amongst the staff or townspeople. The local clergy willingly accepted the explanation. Students studying for the ministry walked beside the casket-bearing wagons, singing funeral songs to the grave site. The local pastor performed the rites, and brief eulogies were given. Countess Báthory herself even attended the services.

  But then the numbers started to multiply. More stories of death, and even rumors of torture and bizarre behavior, began to surface. At about the same time, the knight, Paul Boëd, who worked as assistant manager (Vice Castellan) at Sárvár Castle, also claimed to have seen, at the gates, the bodies of girls being buried amidst funeral singing. While he didn’t personally witness their deaths, he had also heard from other staff members that the girls died from torture. In 1602, Boëd met with Captain János Mogyórssy and Gergely Jánossy, both senior professors at Sárvár, as well as Pastor István Magyari.

  Magyari was a distinguished member of the Lutheran clergy and noted theologian who worked as chaplain under Tamás Nádasdy and continued at his post, after Tamás’ death, for Ferenc and Ezsébet. Despite his advancing age, Magyari remained outspoken and principled. He engaged in literary warfare, for example, with Catholic Archbishop Péter Pázmány, publishing a work entitled Az Országokban Valo Sok Romlásnak Okairol (“The Causes of Hungary’s Ruin”) in 1602 that declared Catholicism the principal cause. Pázmány replied with his own work, Felelet Magyary Istvannak (“Reply to Istvan Magyary”). The two would fire back and forth for years with their respective replies and counter-replies. (Pázmány also worked tirelessly for decades to try and convert, or re-convert, Hungary’s Protestant nobility to Catholicism.)

  The men collectively put the burden on this minister to report these strange activities, telling him, “It is feared that the Lord God will punish us along with you. Either let us all go and get away from here, or you, good Mr. István—since you are a man of the church and would otherwise be guilty—must warn her. If she does not stop, then you must announce her deeds from the pulpit, because it offends the Lord God, and He will not tolerate it.”

  Nobleman Ferenc Bornemisszy (Bornemissze) recounted how Magyari took on the challenge, publicly confronting Countess Báthory when his conscience could no longer tolerate the disturbing events taking place at Sárvár

  . . . . .

  The service that morning was unusual. Pastor Magyari seemed upset, even grave, and his fingers continued to move restlessly over his missal. When it came time to deliver the sermon, he gripped the railings tightly while speaking. He cleared his throat several times throughout, apparently distracted.

  “My Brothers and Sisters,” he finally said, at the conclusion, “in order for me to remain at the pulpit, I must disclose something of the utmost importance to you.”

  The congregation at Sárvár, made up of nobles, servants, and townspeople, had all heard the rumors by now. The gossip had spread that yet another girl had died of torture. Some looked over to the reserved pew of the Lord and Lady Nádasdy. The Lord was away in Vienna on this particular morning, but the Lady was present. Her eyes locked on Magyari now. No one made a sound.

  “It is said about us as a preacher,” Magyari began, “that we know other people complain,” --he turned to face the Lady directly-- “but that Your Grace is not reproached. Therefore, I cannot conceal it. It must be even moreso announced that, regarding the girl, Your Grace should not have so acted because it offends the Lord, and,” his voice began to rise now, “we will be punished if we do not complain to and criticize Your Grace.”

  Her nostrils flared slightly, but the Countess remained silent and upright in posture.

  “In order to confirm that my words are true,” Magyari challenged, “we need only exhume the body.”

  He brought his hand down on the pulpit, perhaps a bit too hard. The noise echoed throughout the church, and a few flinched.

  “You will find that the marks identify the way in which death occurred!”

  Countess Nádasdy turned to face him fully now.

  “See here, Minister István,” she said firmly, “You will soon see that I will make you pay for this. My husband and I have relatives who will not tolerate that you bring such shame on me and denounce me so. You have introduced me to an outrageous situation in which I am subjected to the pulpit, including even the indictment of my husband!”

  She stood up now, and her attendants rose with her.

  “I will write to my husband!”

  “If Your Grace has relatives,” Magyari called after her, “then I also have a relative: the Lord God! But for better proof of what I say, let us dig up the body, and then we will see what you have done!”

  Immediately after this altercation, the Countess stormed back to the palace and wrote a furious letter to her husband in Vienna. She demanded that he punish the pastor for his insults and behavior. Her invective was so severe, in fact, that Ferenc Nádasdy immediately set out for home.

  Pastors Magyari and Zvonaric, meanwhile, did report the strange rumors, much to Count Ferenc Nádasdy’s anger and embarrassment upon his return. On March 27, 1602, a letter was sent to Rev. Gregor Phythiaräus (Gergely Piterius), the pastor at Keresztúr, for guidance. Zvonaric informed Rev. Phythiaräus that he and his colleague at Sárvár had come to the conclusion that they “should warn His Majesty (Count Ferenc Nádasdy) and his wife regarding the atrocities that they have committed. And this also applies to an evil woman, Anna Darvolya, whom everyone knows,” who has “assisted Erzsébet Báthory in inhuman atrocities.”

  Anna Darvolya (Darvulia) is an interesting figure. She was apparently a Croatian woman who lived in the town of Sárvár. She clearly served the Countess between the years 1601-1609 but, based on letters of the clergy and witness testimony, likely served the Nádasdy family even before that. She began to make more frequent appearances at court and eventually took up a permanent residence with the Countess at Csejthe. She was described by locals as a “wild beast in female form” who taught Erzsébet and the other servants elaborate—and deadly—methods of torture. Anna’s favorite method of torture including beating someone repeatedly—up to 500 times in some cases—until death finally occurred. She served as “gate keeper” for the Countess, as well as a personal advisor. She, in fact, was reputedly the one who had advised the Countess to take on only peasant girls “who had not yet tasted the pleasures of love.” This appears in line with Erzsébet’s modus operandi: the disappearance of a few Slovak peasant girls would not have been a political bother to Erzsébet nor merit the attention of authorities.

  Rumors of Anna
’s cruelty—including allegations that she was running a torture chamber and executioner’s butcher shop within Sárvár palace—began to circulate by 1601. In addition, rumors that the Lord and Lady Nádasdy knew exactly what she was doing, including their tacit as well as tangible approval, followed. The servants were in agreement that both Lord and Lady participated with her, more than once. It is likely that Ferenc also shared his own techniques, discovered on the battlefield: Anna Darvolya soon learned how to strangle servants in the “Turkish” style of execution.

  By March of 1602, with the Easter Service approaching, the Sárvár clergy was particularly concerned over a theological point; namely, whether or not to deny the Eucharist at the coming service and possibly even excommunicate the female accomplice, Anna, for her actions. In letters to their colleagues and superiors, the Sárvár clergy bristled at the thought that Anna Darvolya would brazenly approach the communion rail on Easter Sunday. Both she and the Countess routinely attended services as though nothing had happened.

  During this time, excommunication was the subject of dispute between Lutherans and Calvinists. Upon agreement by a council of Lutheran elders, the Sárvár pastors were advised to make clear to the Lord and Lady the gravity of their sins, as well as consequent results.