The Case Against Elizabeth Báthory

The case

Elizabeth Báthory was never tried. That fact sits at the centre of one of the most argued-over cases in European history. When the Palatine of Hungary, György Thurzó, arrived at her castle of Csejte at the end of December 1610 and took her into custody, the outcome had already been negotiated with her family. Her servants were tried, tortured and executed. The countess herself was shut away in her own castle, where she died three and a half years later.

She was one of the most powerful women in the kingdom. Born in 1560 into the Báthory family, whose members ruled Transylvania and, in her uncle Stephen's case, Poland, she was well educated, reading and writing several languages, and was married at fourteen to Ferenc Nádasdy, a leading commander in the wars against the Ottomans. With her husband constantly at war, she ran a large network of estates and castles in what is now western Hungary and Slovakia. Nádasdy died in January 1604, leaving her a wealthy widow.

Rumours about the treatment of young women in her household had circulated for years. Between 1602 and 1604 a Lutheran minister, István Magyari, complained publicly and to the court in Vienna. In March 1610, on the king's authority, Thurzó ordered two notaries to collect testimony. By the autumn they had dozens of statements and by 1611 more than three hundred.

The witnesses described girls and young women, first servants from peasant families and later daughters of minor nobles sent to her household to learn manners, who were beaten, burned, starved and killed, and whose deaths were explained away or concealed. Some witnesses had seen injured girls themselves; many reported what others had told them. A castellan at Sárvár spoke of at least 175 deaths there, though he said he did not know their causes. The highest figure, 650, came from a single servant repeating a claim about a register no one ever produced.

Four of Báthory's servants, Dorottya Szentes, Ilona Jó, Katarína Benická and János Újváry, known as Ficzkó, were arrested with her. They were interrogated under torture and tried in January 1611 before a court that heard seventeen witnesses. They confessed and said they had acted on their mistress's orders. Szentes, Jó and Újváry were executed; Benická, judged to have been coerced by the others, was imprisoned for life.

King Matthias wanted Báthory tried and, if convicted, put to death, which would have allowed the Crown to seize her lands and wipe out a large debt he owed her. Thurzó and her family preferred a quieter course. Her son and sons-in-law had agreed in advance on the division of her property, and her son-in-law wrote to thank Thurzó for choosing what he called the lesser of two evils, sparing the family public disgrace.

That is where the modern argument begins. Since the 1980s some historians have argued that Báthory was the victim of a political move against a rich Protestant widow whose nephew, Gábor Báthory, ruled Transylvania and threatened the Habsburgs; that testimony was hearsay, extracted under torture or led by questioners; and that wounded and sick tenants, for whom a landowner's household provided care, were presented as victims. Others answer that the evidence came from hundreds of people across several counties, including eyewitnesses who were not tortured, that the complaints began with a Lutheran minister rather than a Catholic court, and that her own family accepted her guilt in private letters. The records support the conclusion that many young women died in her households. Who killed them, and how far the countess herself was responsible, is where the evidence remains contested.

Báthory spent her last years confined at Csejte. She was found dead on the morning of 21 August 1614.