Countess Dracula (29 page)

I would find grievous ways to have thee slain,
Intense device, and superflux of pain.

Algernon Charles Swinburne,
Anactoria

The Palatine defies the King ~ the 1611 hearings ~ further exchanges ~ a letter from the fiscus ~ the last twelve testimonies ~ strange consistencies ~ the judicial aspects of the case ~ family relations ~ the Chief Justice upbraids the Palatine ~ the rise and fall of Gábor Báthory ~ Elisabeth's last declaration ~ death and silence

If the followers of Luther had been entrusted with the Hungarian Palatine's spiritual wellbeing, we can still see in his character a struggle between the enlightened humanism of Erasmus and the cynical
Realpolitik
of Macchiavelli. In his correspondence with Matthias, the absentee King of Hungary during the year 1611, Macchiavelli is to the fore, but there is another tension running through George Thurzó's half of the exchanges between the two men: the need to strike a balance between, on the one side, his loyalty to the holy crown
and the Habsburg cause, strengthened by a personal regard for Matthias, and on the other, his patriotic duty as Palatine and as a Magyar noble to protect the remains of Hungary from disintegration or annexation by the Empire to the west. No less than this was at stake while Countess Báthory's right to life was still in question and the Nádasdy-Báthory inheritance at risk.

Once Elisabeth had been shut into the castle at
Č
achtice and the bodies of her servants consumed on the pyre, Thurzó sent word to the King. The sovereign Matthias of course had his own agents in Upper Hungary and knew that steps had been taken to isolate Francis Nádasdy's widow, but he was relying on Thurzó to deal with the matter and keep him informed: communications were slow and the King was preoccupied with strengthening his position in his own Imperial court and with formulating a policy to cope with the aggressive resurgence of Transylvania under Gábor Báthory.

The draft of Thurzó's message to the King still exists, and it hints that at this point the Palatine was improvising rather than working to a carefully scheduled plan.
¹
He reports the arrest of Countess Báthory for the murder of up to 300 maidens and asserts that the Lady was caught in the act, prompting Thurzó in his righteous anger to pass his own sentence of life imprisonment on her there and then. The letter includes a brief account of the confessions of the servants, but, intriguingly, in the description of their interrogation by his legal assistants the phrase ‘et tortura' – ‘and [by] torture' – has been struck out, probably by Thurzó himself. This would have the effect of adding credibility to the charges, but in reinforcing an accusation of mass-murder would make it even more likely that the King would intervene.

If Thurzó hoped that Matthias would meekly accept this
fait accompli
and endorse his decision, he was quickly disabused. On 14 January the King responded by issuing a letter which contained the substance of Thurzó's report, but emphasised the noble rank of some of the murdered girls.
²
On the basis of the information he had received, the King decreed that fresh investigations should be carried out in
Č
achtice, Ujhely, Beckov, Kostol'any, Sárvár, Keresztúr and Léka – the family estates in the north and west – in preparation for a full-scale trial.

On the same date in a separate letter the King requested the Palatine's advice on how to deal with another member of the Nádasdy family whom he suspected of treasonable sympathies. The noble in question was Count Thomas Nádasdy, cousin to the late Francis, and the
suspicion of disloyalty was not unexpected, given that Thomas was living in Gábor Báthory's court in Transylvania at the time. In his letter Matthias asked Thurzó whether in his opinion there were grounds for putting Lord Nádasdy on trial.
³
It is known that Thomas had sought and received permission from the crown before going to Alba Julia, and Hungary was not at war with Transylvania: even if Thomas had not signed the oath of allegiance demanded by Thurzó at the end of the previous year, any trumped-up charges made against him would remind the Hungarians of the blatantly unjust attempt by the Habsburgs to destroy Count Illésházy and would undo all Thurzó's attempts to keep the Magyars loyal and their estates out of Habsburg hands. Thurzó's reply has not survived, but he seems to have persuaded Matthias against another show trial.

Where Elisabeth was concerned the King was adamant and Thurzó could not openly defy him, so in response to the demand for a new and thorough inquiry followed by a formal trial, the same Andrew Keresztúry presided over a further stage in the investigations during the first half of 1611. Two hundred and twenty-four new testimonies were heard from witnesses coming from the communities bordering the Váh river including Kostol'any,
Č
achtice, Beckov and Vrbové.
⁴
The resulting evidence was officially certified on 26 July. Many of the new informants simply confirmed the testimony of fellow-witnesses or stated that they were aware of the Lady's cruelties and nothing more, but some went into more detail, and a consistent set of accusations emerges.

Michael Fábry, the Kostol'any pastor who gave evidence during the first round of interrogations, appeared again, and amplified his previous statements, saying that he knew that many maidens had been tortured and that the Countess ducked naked girls in icy water in wintertime. In his previous deposition he had said simply that two girls were buried in his parish in secret: this time he affirmed that they had been murdered at
Č
achtice at the time of George Drugeth's marriage to Kate Nádasdy. His statements were confirmed by the magistrate at Kostol'any, Thomas Jávorka, who further testified that Elisabeth Báthory put a hot iron into the girls' genitals. This detail was confirmed by the manor clerk, Michael Horváth, who added that two other girls had been buried at Lešetice ‘even during the sitting of the Lord Palatine's court [the Diet] at Bratislava' – in other words, as late as October 1610, after the investigations had begun.

A gentleman named Michael Hervojth, an administrator at the castle at
Č
achtice, said that the Countess tortured girls daily by putting hot iron bars into their vaginas and by whipping them. When the Lady's daughter, the wife of Lord Nicholas Zrínyi, had come to visit her (in the autumn of 1610), the Lady had had five girls buried in the grain pit. Two other maidens had been buried at Lesetice and one body was buried in a little garden by the manor-house, where dogs had discovered it and dug it up.

Paul Horváth stated that Ficzkó had used planks of wood to construct the coffins for the two girls who had been buried at Kostol'any. These two facts – the burials and Ficzkó's involvement – were the substance of most of the following testimonies. Matthew Lakatjártó, whose brother had testified in 1610, mentioned the death of the ‘Sittkey girl' at the hands of (or on the orders of) the Countess.

Nicholas Barosius, the priest of Vrbové village, said that he had seen girls suffering from injuries both at the castle and at the manor-house in
Č
achtice. He also asserted that Countess Báthory had threatened that, if she was imprisoned, Gábor Báthory, the Prince of Transylvania, would come and rescue her.

The next to give evidence was John Sl'uka, a member of the minor gentry, also from Vrbové, who had been named the previous year as the person sent to obtain poisons from the pharmacist at Trnava. He confirmed this and said that the substance was antimony, and that the supplier, Dr Martin, had asked him what such a large quantity was needed for because it could kill many people.

The name of the ninetieth witness is already familiar to us from the secret letter sent by Pastor Ponikenus at the time of Elisabeth's arrest:
⁵
this was Andrew Priderovi
ć
, who was listed as a squire from the village of
Č
achtice. Priderović said that he had been present at the manor-house when the Countess had been taken away to the castle to be imprisoned. He also said that he had seen for himself the body of a young girl being loaded into a coach. He had heard from others, and the doctor could verify, that one girl's corpse had been seen with traces of rope marks around the neck and marks of mutilation on the rest of her body. A woman had also been bound because she had refused to allow her daughter to be taken away, and another girl had wounds in her body so deep that a whole fist could be placed in them. The injuries looked as if they had been made by the tongs used in torturing.

John Jele
ň
, also a squire from
Č
achtice, said that he had seen three
young girls who had been carried to Lešetice for burial and two others who had been buried at Kostol'any. One of these two maidens was from Trnava and the other was from the Nitra region (he did not name them). John Anda
č
y, one of the
Č
achtice castle wardens, repeated the story of the murders at the time of George Drugeth's wedding. He added that a girl who had been mutilated was treated by the surgeon from Nové Mesto nad Váhom. Another of the castle wardens, a second Michael Horváth, referred to the occasion on which dogs dug up bodies from a small garden near the manor-house: he asserted that seven maidens had been buried there.

The ninety-seventh witness to be examined was the target of Andrew Priderovi
ć
's anger, Jan Abrahamides Ponikenus himself, the priest of
Č
achtice who had supplied details of the Lady's atrocities in a letter to his superior in the last days of the previous year. On this occasion Ponikenus, after giving his age as thirty-eight and stating that he had been in his post at
Č
achtice for eight years, said that during his incumbency he had heard many dreadful things concerning the Widow Nádasdy. He said that he had heard from a servant who had been ‘in the place where the doomed girls were sent to recover'. This servant had spied on the goings-on in these quarters through a crack in the wooden panelling and had seen a group of crones holding lighted candles ‘gathered around the stomach of a naked woman'. Ponikenus' informant had no inkling, he said, of what the old women were up to.

It was the following witness who supplied details of cannibalism: the squire Martin
Č
anády stated that Elisabeth Báthory murdered the sister of squire John Belanský when the young woman was at her court. She also murdered squire George Tuchinský's daughter. He knew also that she put a hot iron bar into the genitals of a girl who was the daughter of Benedict the barber-surgeon, the brother of John
Č
ápový (referred to elsewhere as
Č
áfordý and
Č
ápový), the castle warden at Beckov. What is more, he had knowledge that the lady had sausages made from the flesh of dead girls and served them at meals. George Kéry of Beckov confirmed the cruel murders of the daughters of Belanský and Tuchinský, as did several other witnesses, and George Szombathy of Beckov, one of Daniel Pongrácz's administrators, declared that Tuchinský had told him that Báthory had cruelly killed his daughter and buried her at Kostol'any.

Dorothy, the wife of George Stankovský of Beckov, said that she knew that one Anna Velika had brought the daughter of Benedict
Barbel, the sister of
Č
ápový, alias Szabó, the Beckov castle warden, whom she had tortured. The victim was named as Anna by a later witness, the magistrate George Tarnócy, who also said that Báthory had used a heated iron bar to torture.

Peter Szabó, a local official from Beckov, said that he had seen with his own eyes a number of girls suffering from many wounds and bruises. He had heard that Nicholas Kardoss' wife (someone mentioned by several other witnesses) had brought two girls for the Countess. John Kun, who served Francis Mágóchy at Beckov, said that his kinsman Sándor Kun, who was the court master at the Nádasdy manor-house in
Č
achtice, told him that girls were made to sit in baths of scalding water and that the Countess tore their flesh from their shoulders and dislocated their arms.

Several other women testified, among them Dorothy Jezernická, wife of Francis Bárdy, a squire. She claimed that in 1590 she sent her own daughter Elisabeth to Countess Báthory's court and that Báthory cruelly murdered the girl. Frusina Latkócy, another squire's wife, stated that she had frequently seen with her own eyes young women suffering from weakness and wounds and covered with bruises at the Nádasdy court. All the remaining witnesses either referred to or repeated the information given by others.

Several questions immediately arise in connection with this evidence. Why, if they were still living (which is not certain), were the bereaved fathers, the nobles Belanský and Tuchinský, not called to testify in person? The answer may be that they both lived in Liptov county, which was not wholly under George Thurzó's direct control. Additionally, it is vital to remember that only the lesser nobility could be called upon to appear before a court without an order from the King himself. If these men were of the rank of Pongrácz, Mágóchy or Megyery, for example, they, like those notables and like other named aristocrats – Zichy, Sittkey and the rest – could never be summoned.

Why was Dorothy Jezernická allowed to accuse the Countess of murdering her daughter without being required to go into more detail about the circumstances? And why did Pastor Ponikenus, who in his letter had been so prolific in describing the horrors inflicted by the Lady, say so little, giving only the second-hand account of the women hovering over a naked body (explained by Elisabeth's defenders today as a healing or gynaecological process), leaving it to his fellow-witness Martin Canády to make the only mention of
cooking and eating human flesh, and to his fellow-priest Barosius to impute disloyalty to the crown?