Elisabeth Barthory: Countess of Blood

Conspiring with Elisabeth’s estranged son Paul, Thurzo decided to arrest her presumed accomplices. On 30 December, 1610, in his official capacity of Investigating Judge, Thurzo paid a visit to Csejte Castle. What he found there horrified him. He found one woman dead and another dying. A young girl was chained to a wall, pale and near death, her body drained of all blood. Others were found in cellars beneath the Castle bound and chained, some dead, some alive, many had had their breasts bitten, and they all bore the marks of beatings and whippings. One body was even found in the fireplace. A colleague of Thurzo’s reported that “We watched in horror as dogs ran around with body parts in their mouths.”

Outraged, Thurzo arrested Elisabeth, but the Authorities delayed proceedings against her, postponing her prosecution indefinitely. Her accomplices, however, were not so fortunate. They were tortured and under torture they confessed all. The Countess Barthory, they said, would bind her victims and then beat them into senselessness before mutilating and burning their bodies, particularly the face and genitalia. Many of the bodies found in the grounds of the Castle had the marks of torture upon them. Acquaintances claimed that the Countess was notoriously vain and obsessed with her own beauty. She would change her clothes repeatedly sometimes six or seven times a day. Mirrors adorned every available space in the Castle and she liked nothing more than to have her servants massage oils into her naked body. It was claimed that as she got older she would lie in her bath as one of her servants held the severed head of a victim over her. The blood would mingle with the water and she would discover the elixir of eternal youth by bathing in the blood of virgins. Many other witnesses now came forward eager to reveal what they had seen at the Castle, and in the surrounding villages. Elisabeth, accompanied by a shadowy figure named Anna Darvulia, who was probably her lover and disappeared soon after, would visit the local villages late at night and forcibly abduct young girls, taking them to the Castle against their will.

The evidence against Elisabeth was damning. Just how many young women were tortured and killed? No one can say for sure. Two of her accomplices, Dorrotya Szentes and Janos Flicko, provided the figures of 36 and 37. But around 200 bodies were recovered from the Castle grounds. On 7 January, 1611, Judge Theodosius Symiensis de Szulo, passed sentence on Elisabeth Barthory’s accomplices in murder. Her maidservants, Dorrotya Szentes and IIona Jo, were executed immediately by being burned alive, but only after their fingernails had been pulled out. Janos Flicko, was deemed less culpable, and merely beheaded. Kathleen Bernicka, a simple girl who had been bullied by the others, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

But what of Elisabeth Barthory herself? Despite being charged on 80 counts of murder she was never brought to trial. Instead she was placed under house arrest and confined to a series of small rooms in the Castle Csejte where she was walled in. She was not permitted to communicate with anyone and her food and water was delivered through a hatch. She was never to emerge from her incarceration. She was found dead four years later on 21 August, 1614. But she may have died much earlier. She was aged 54.

Elisabeth Barthory proclaimed her innocence throughout the proceedings. The women she said had died of illness and disease. She could not, she said, be held responsible for the whims of nature. Later documents were found listing the names of 650 women and a written curse damning all those who had accused her and summoning animals to gouge out their eyes and eat their hearts. In this respect at least, some might say that she died as she had lived.