The Blood Countess

      Elizabeth Bathroy: The Blood Countess

"Help me, O Clouds. O Clouds, stay by me. Let no harm come to me. Let me remain healthy and invincible. Send, O send, you powerful Clouds, ninety cats. I command you, O King of the Cats, I pray you. May you gather them together, even if you are in the mountains, or on the waters, or on the roofs, or on the other side of the ocean. May these ninety cats appear to tear and destroy the hearts of kings and princes, And in the same way the hearts of teachers and judges, so they shall harm me not. Holy Trinity, protect me."- the prayer of Elizabeth Bathory

 

 

Elizabeth was born in 1560 in Transylvania even as a child she was prone to exteme agression charatrized by fits of uncontrolled rage. At age 15 she married Ferencz Nadasdy as a wedding gift he gave to her castle Sarvar. her victims were mainly female children or young women  They had been lured from the country with the promise of employment in the castle, and women in some of the villages actually conspired to provide girls for money or small gifts. If the girls did not come willingly, they were beaten into unconsciousness and carried off. At the castle, they were bound and stabbed with needles and scissors, among other cruelties. They had been chosen for the softness of their skin and of their tongues and for their youth and beauty. her tortures have been said to include spreading honey over a naked servant girl and leave her tied down outside for the bugs to nibble and bees to sting, and freezing a girl to death during the winter by pouring water over her naked body until it hardened and she was unable to move. she also would be the girls until their swollen bodies were then cut up with razors, she had the girls burned, and then cut up, she would sew a servant girls mouth shut, force her to eat strips of her own flesh, or burn her genitals, cutting their fingers one by one with shears and then slit the veins with scissors. when the peasant girls had run out. elizabeth, ever daring, turned her blood thirst to lesser aristocrats. which led to her downfall  After the murder of one of such young lady in 1609, which they tried to stage as a suicide, the authorities finally decided to act.  The king supported it, because elizabeth had been asking him to repay funds he had borrowed from her husband, and if the rumors proved true and she was arrested, he would be free of his debt.  officials searched her castle for evidence. They discovered bones and other human remains, along with the clothing and personal effects of missing girls.one of Thurzos lieutenants who wrote that as they searched the castle, they came upon the dead bodies of young girls everywhere they looked. Many had no arms or eyes. One blackened body was in the fireplace, not fully burned, and quite a few were buried in shallow graves around the castle. We watched in horror as the dogs ran about with parts of the girls in their mouths. A discovered register was entered as evidence that included in elizabeths handwriting the names of, and small details about, more than 650 female victims. After her trial her accomplices who turned agenst her and spoke agenist her were tortured and put to death in a variety of ways some had their fingers pulled off, some were buried alive, some were beheaded the judges considered what to do with the mistress. She was confined to her rooms, with the entrances and windows walled up, save for tiny slits for food and air. When they tore down the walls to retrieve her body, legend has it that they found a brief document to the effect of her paryer that before her imprisonment she had invoked a darker power to send 99 cats to tear out the hearts of her accusers and judges.The priest, who read it, recalled the cats they had seen that night when they entered the castle.