The Blood Countess

Elizabeth Bathory was the Countess that tortured and murdered several (hundred) young women and because of this she was known as one of the "true" vampires of the history. The Bathory family lived in where we knew today as Solvak Republic. It's been said that she was Hungarian, but that is due to the fact that in that time the Hungarian borders were not "fixed". She grew in a property from the Bathory family, in Ecsed, Transylvania. When she was a child, she was subject the accompanied sudden illnesses of intense hate and uncontrollable behavior. In 1574, Elizabeth became pregnant from a brief "affair" with a peasant. But as soon as its "bell" was visible, she was hidden from everybody, because she was bride of the Cout Ferencz Nadasdy.

Elizabeth married him in May of 1575. As he was a soldier, Count Nadasy passed most of the time in campaigns that the Countess had to assume the duties of taking care of Savar's Castle, property of the Nadasdy family. It was there that her malign career really began, with the "teaching" of a big number of employees, maily young women. She not only punished those that infringed her regulations, as well as she found excuses for severe punishments, delighting with torture and her victims' death.

It is said that certain day the Countess was being combed by a young maid, when the girl accidentally pulled her hair. Elizabeth turned to her and beat her. The blood sneezed from her nose and some drops were in Elizabeths hand. When scrubbing the blood in the hands, these seemed to take the girl's forms jovias. It was starting from this incident that Elizathe developed her reputation of wanting the virgin youths' blood.

Count Nadasdy not only participated in his wife's cruel acts as he taught to her new torture forms. he came to die in 1604. After his death, Elizabeth noved to Vienna, and soon, after sometime, she moved to the Solar of Cachtice, the place that was scenery of her more vicious and famous acts. A second history speaks about Elizabeth's behavior after the death of her husband, when it was said she was wrapped up with younger men. In one occession, when she was in company of one of those men, she saw an old woman and she asked him: "What would you make if you had to kiss that old witch?" The man answered with scron words. The old woman, however, when hearing that dialogue accused Elizabeth of excessive vanity and increased that such appearance was inevitable, even for a countess. Several historians have been tying the death of Elizabeth's husband and that history, its concern that she to take a bath in blood because she feared to grow old. in the following years after the death of her husband, Elizabeth got a new companion for her sadistic acts: a woman called Anna Darvulia, who is not very known. When the health of Darvulia worsened, Elizabeth went back to Erzsi Majorova, a local farmer's widow, her tenant. And it seems that this was the responsible person for the Countess' decline because she motivated her to include among the victims, women from t he nobility, by virtue of the diffculty that Elizabeth was having to get new maids )or they would be victims?).

After all, the Countess' fame and it's behavior were already known by all the villages around. In 1609, Elizabeth killed a noble youth and she hid tha fact alleging suicide. In 1610, the investigations about the countess' crims began. Actually, it was more for political reason (Count Nadasdy had lent money to the King and this wanted to see free from such loan confiscating the Countess' latifundium). Even so the suspicions of her murders, were plus than an excuse to sum up the plans of the crown.

With that, on December 26, 1610, Countess Elizabeth Bathory was arrested and judged some days later. On January 7, 1611, it was presentedas testimony, a diary containing all her victims' names, registered with its own letter. In totality, there were 650 victims. Besides her murderess reputation and sadistic, she was still accused of being a lycan and/or a vampire. During her judgement, several people affirmed that she bit the girls' body that she tortured. She was accused then of draining the blood of her victims and of taking a bath in that blood to retain the youth. For all the parameters, Elizabeth was a very attractive woman.

The Book of Werewolves registers the basic legend of a Hungarian Countess that killed her maids to bathe in their blood, once she imagined that that treatment would maintain her skin young and healthy. The truth is that she murdered 650 girls for that end. The testimony of hundreds of people demonstrated that her use of blood for cosmetic purposes was legend, but it confirmed that she in face killed more than 650 girls (she remembers each cruelty in her diary). The Countess evidently liked to bite and dilacerar her youth maids' meat. One of her nicknames was "Tiger of Cachtice". She tortured also in Vienna, where she possessed a mansion on Agostinians Street, close to the real palace in the downtown. During the judgement in 1611, it was confirmed that "in Vienna, the monks thrown themselves against the windows when they heard the screams (of the girls being tortured)." Those monks certainly were from the old Agostinian Monastery that confronts the mansion Bathory. In the basement, Elizabeth ordered a blacksmith to build one species of wood compartment or cell, where she tortured slaves. The constant marriages in the family among the noble families of Hungary destined to maintain the properties to each other, took genetic degeneration; own Elizabeth was subject of epileptical attacks.


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