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In Dedication To Erzsebet Bathory: 1560-1614.
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 Bathory estate at the foot of the brooding Carpathian Mountains, Erzsebet was introduced to devil worship in adolescence by one of her Satanist uncles. Her favorite aunt, one of Hungary's most notorious lesbians, taught Erzsebet the pleasures of flagellation and other perversions, but young Erzsebet always believed that where pain was concerned, it was better to give than to receive.
Where torture was concerned, the bisexual countess possessed a ferocious imagination. Some of her tricks were learned in childhood, and others were picked up from Nadasdy's experience battling the Turks, but she also contrived techniques of her own. Pins and needles were favorite tricks of the trade, piercings 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.
She carried special silver pincers, designed for ripping the 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 speical "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 or suggestions and sick "jokes", lapsing into crude obscenities and incoherent babble as the night wore on.
Eighty counts of murder were alleged in court, though most historical accounts place Erzsebet's final body count somewhere between 300 and 650 victims.
Bizarre as it is, the Bathory legend has grown in the telling, most recent accounts incorporating tales of vampirism and ritualistic blood baths supposed to help Erzsebet "stay young".
More Facts...
*All records of Elizabeth were sealed for more than a century, and her name was forbidden to be spoken in Hungarian society.
*Unlike most females of the time, Elizabeth was well educated and her intelligence surpassed even some of the men of her time. Elizabeth was exceptional, becoming "fluent in Hungarian, Latin, and German... when most Hungarian nobles could not even spell or write...Even the ruling prince of Transylvania at the time was barely literate"(20). Some modern scholars and contemporaries of hers postulated that she may have been insane, thus accounting for her seemingly inconceivable atrocities, but even a brief glance into her past reveals a person fully in control of her faculties.
*Dracula, created by the Irish author Bram Stoker, was based, albeit loosely, on the Romanian Prince, Vlad Dracula, the Impaler. Raymond T. McNally, who has written four books on the figure of Dracula in history, literature, and vampirism, in his fifth book, "Dracula was a Woman," presents insights into the fact that Stoker's Count Dracula was also strongly influenced by the legends of Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary. Why, for example, make a Romanian Prince into a Hungarian Count? Why, if there are no accounts of Vlad Dracula drinking human blood, does blood drinking consume the Dracula of Stoker's novel, who, contrary to established vampire myth, seems to appear younger after doing so? The answers, of course, lie in examining the story of Countess Elizabeth Bathory.
*It was largely Slovak servants whom Erzsebet killed, so the name "Csejthe" is only spoken in derision, and she is still called "The Hungarian Whore" in the area.
(http://bathory.org/shyla.html)
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