by Tony Thorne
Ficzkó’s responses are set down here just as they appear in the records, with some comments inserted, but no attempt has been made to improve the style or impose this author’s interpretation. (In the other testimonies which will be considered, some repetitions, irrelevancies and obvious errors have been removed for the sake of brevity.)
The preface of the ‘protocol’ or first draft summary of the servants’ interrogation reads: ‘This is the confessions of persons of low rank against Mistress Nádasdy, Elisabeth Báthory, on the Second of January in 1611 in the county town of Bytča. First János Újváry, otherwise known as Ficzkó, gave the following confession to the questions in order.’1
First question: How long has he lived with the lady and how did he come to her court?
Response: He has been living with the lady for sixteen years, if not longer. He was taken from Mrs Martin Csejthe, the wife of a student, by force.
Second question: From that time hence, how many girls and women had been killed? [Literally ‘had he/she killed’ – the reference is not clear.]
Response: He does not know of any woman or mistress, but of girls, since he has been living there, he knows of thirty-seven in number. Besides, when his Lord Palatine went to Pressburg, he [or ‘she’] buried five in a pit, two in a small garden and one under a drain. The one is dead who was found and showed to him [the ‘him’ is ambiguous]. Two were taken to Lešetice [a small village now called Podolie] into the church by night and they were buried there. They were taken there from the castle because that is where they were killed. Mistress Dorkó killed them.
Third question: Who were they that she had killed and where were they from?
Response: He does not know whose daughters they were.
Fourth question: Which and what manner of women were summoned to the court and taken there?
Response: Six times he himself, this witness, with Mistress Dorkó went to look for girls, and the girls were promised that they were taken to be merchants or serving-women somewhere. This last dead girl was from a ‘Horvát’ [Croat] village somewhere over near Rednek, and she was taken from there. She [presumably Dorkó] was there with her, and then she had her killed [or ‘caused her death’ – the use of the Hungarian causative structure is likewise ambiguous throughout]. With Mistress Dorkó to look for girls were also Mrs János Bársony who lives close to Gyöngyös in a place called Teplánfalva, and besides this there was a Croatian woman living at Sárvár, Mrs Matej Ötvös, who lives opposite Mrs János Zalay. Mrs János Szabó also brought girls. She brought her own daughter and she [either Dorkó or Báthory] had her killed as well, of which she [presumably the mother] was aware, but despite that fact, she brought more and took more girls there. Mrs George Szabó also gave her own daughter to her at Čachtice and she had her killed, but more she did not take. Mrs Stephen Szabó also brought many; Mistress Helena also brought enough. Mistress Kata never brought girls, she just buried those who were killed by Mistress Dorkó.
Fifth question: With what kind of treatment and by which method did she have them killed?
Response: They tortured in the following way: they tied the arms of the girls with Viennese cord. The woman called Mistress Anna Darvulia who lives [sic] at Sárvár tied their hands behind them – like the colour of death, their hands were – and they were beaten until their body was opened up. Their palms and the soles of their feet they were beating for as long – five hundred blows – as they beat the other captive women. But they learned how to torture from this Mistress Darvulia first of all, and they were beating them until they died. Mistress Dorkó also cut with scissors the hands of the one who did not die at Čachtice.
Sixth question: Who assisted in the killing and torturing?
Response: Besides these three women, there is a woman at Čachtice called Mistress Helena who is also called ‘the bald Mrs Kočiš’ and she also tortured the girls. The woman, she herself pricked them with a needle if the lace was not tight. The old women took them into the torturing house . . . they burned them with an iron rod and she herself and all the old women burned them on the mouth, the nose and the lips. She put her fingers into the mouth, pulled it apart, and that is how she tortured. If they did not finish their needlework, then they were taken to be tortured. They took as many as ten a day. Like sheep they were taken there; sometimes four or five naked girls were just standing before him [the accused] and the young lads could also see that. And even in these cases they did their needlework or tied the lace. And again she punished Sittkey’s daughter because she stole a pear. And she started to torture her and in the place called Piešt’ány with the old women they killed together those two who were suffering the pains of childbirth. She killed the Viennese girl Miss Modl at the place called Keresztúr.
Seventh question: Where did they bury the dead bodies; who hid the bodies . . . and how were they hidden?
Response: These old women hid and buried the girls here in Čachtice. He himself, the accused, helped to bury four of them: two in the place called Lešetice, one in the place called Keresztúr and also one in the place called Sárvár. The others were all buried in Sárvár, accompanied by singing, and also in Keresztúr and Lešetice. When these old women killed one of the girls, the Mistress gave them presents. She herself tore the faces and other parts of the bodies of these girls and pricked them under their nails. And after that the tortured girl was taken into the frost-covered field and cold water was poured over her with the help of these old women. She herself also poured water over the girl. The girl froze and died. Here at Bytča when he was leaving, at the place called Predmier, one of the girls was put up to her throat in water and had water poured over her – the girl who escaped from her at Illava and who was found and then she died in Čachtice.
Eighth question: Did the woman herself torture them and what precisely did she do when she tortured them and had them killed? [Another version of this question runs: What did she do then if she did not torture and did not have these unfortunate beings killed? – this might lead us to think either that the transcribers were recording loosely, or that the wording of the questions was changed for the final versions.]
Response: When she herself did not torture, just left this work to the old women, she was in the laundry-house. She did not give the girls anything to eat for a week, and if someone secretly gave them food, that person would immediately be punished.
Ninth question: In Čachtice, in Sárvár, in Keresztúr, in Beckov and in other locations, in which places did she have these poor ones tortured and killed?
Response: In Beckov in the chamber. Inside the furnace-house she had the girls tortured. In Sárvár they were torturing in the inner part of the castle, where no one was allowed to go. In Keresztúr they were torturing in the privy. In Čachtice they were torturing inside in the furnace-house. When they were on a journey, at that time she herself tortured in the carriage. She was beating them and pinching and pricking the girls’ mouths with a needle.
Tenth question: Of important personages, who was there, and who was aware of the deeds of the woman, and who saw the woman’s actions?
Response: The steward Benedict Dezsö [more usually ‘Deseő’] was aware of most things; he was more involved than the others, but he [presumably the accused] did not hear that this Benedict addressed the Mistress about these matters. It was also common knowledge among the servants, and the apprentices were also aware. There was also a person who was called ‘Ironhead Steve’ who had recently left the woman for Transdanubia: he was aware of everything – much better informed than this witness himself – and he had been playing freely with the woman [this tantalising comment could have a sexual sense, or mean that they literally played/gamed together, or that some power allowed him to toy with or behave over-familiarly with his mistress]. This man had carried more to be buried, but the witness does not know whither.
Eleventh question: For how long were they aware of the woman’s terrible deeds and when did these date from?
Response
: Even when the Master was alive she had been torturing girls, but in those days she did not kill them as she now did. The poor Master complained about this and he disapproved, but she did not care about the warning. But then after Mistress Anna Darvulia arrived, that one [presumably Darvulia] started to kill the girls, and after that the Mistress herself became more and more cruel and wicked. With the help of a tiny box with a little mirror set in it, she was beseeching. The wife of the Majoros [the tenant farmer] in Myjava prepared some water and at about four o’clock brought this water and had the woman bathed in a bread-pan. She poured the water out into the brook, and from the second mixture in the pan they wanted to bake a sort of bread which they wanted the King, my Lord Palatine and also Imre Megyery to eat and thus poison them. But these lords recognised this [enchantment] and moved against the woman, because as they ate from the first baking, they complained of their stomachs, and she then did not dare arrange the second baking.
What we know for sure about the real Ficzkó is little more than his name: he is mentioned in many of the accusations collected during Thurzó’s inquiry, but the stories told by witnesses hostile to him were not all necessarily accurate. In the literature that grew up around the persona of the Blood Countess, Ficzkó features prominently; his precise age was not specified at the trial, although his youth was referred to in the judgement and in separate documents. George Thurzó and the pastor of Čachtice, Ponikenus, call him ‘the young man’. This, coupled with his nickname, which can be translated as ‘the Lad’ or ‘Boy’, is significant as it helps to explain his transformation in fiction. Some writers, puzzled that an adult had kept this childish sobriquet, decided that it referred to his size or the fact that he was treated as a plaything. By the nineteenth century a French source was referring to him as ‘Filsko [sic], nain de sa cour’ (‘her court dwarf),2 a hundred years later he is ‘a kind of idiot hunchback gnome, very vicious, but at the same time docile’.3 Just as Elisabeth herself seems to have provided a character for gothic romances, Ficzkó may be a precursor of a stock figure still to be seen in debased form in cartoons and video games, the evil and misshapen retainer.
There are several points in Ficzkó’s confession which deserve attention. First and foremost, the way he frames his answers to the first four questions coupled with the ambiguity inbuilt in his native language mean that he may be accusing Dorkó rather than Elisabeth. Later, however, he does seem to be implicating the Countess herself.
There are some curious passages; for instance, Ficzkó says that as a very young boy and presumably an orphan he ‘was taken by force’ from ‘the wife of a student’ (deák, the Hungarian word, often also denoted an educated person or clerk). Although women were sometimes lured into service and homeless children were occasionally adopted by noblewomen, it was very rare for them to be abducted. Perhaps the comment is an error by the transcriber, or perhaps the accused is trying to emphasise his helplessness in the affair.
When Ficzkó reacts to the second question, he may be trying to impress the court with his truthfulness, or possibly it is a hint of bravado, or else simply the literal response of an unsophisticated person. Later, though, his testimony does seem questionable as he claims not to know any details of the girls who died, yet remembers the names and even addresses of the women who procured them.
Two other significant details are the mention – one of only two among the hundreds who testified – of a girl escaping from the clutches of the Countess, and the reference to magic. Ficzkó describes his mistress using her mirror to ‘beseech’ – to call up spirits, cast spells or ask for supernatural aid, and gives details of the ritual preparation of the deadly cake, although he does not explain how Elisabeth could have sent it to the intended victims or persuaded them to eat it.
Finally there is the strange matter of Istok (the diminutive form of István, Stephen), nicknamed ‘Ironhead’. Here Ficzkó may simply be trying to shift some of his blame on to the other man’s shoulders – may even have invented an alter ego in his desperation, but this is also the one and only possible reference to sexual impropriety in the thousands of words recorded against Elisabeth at that time. In other investigations of prominent women, as we shall see, allegations of promiscuity or infidelity were common. In the court records Elisabeth’s ‘Ironhead Stephen’ simply ‘disappeared into Transdanubia’, and strangely no one else even mentioned this memorable character.
While we are looking at the information provided to the court by Countess Báthory’s assistants, we must keep in mind that their words had been transcribed shortly after they had undergone a second session of torture ordered by the Palatine, George Thurzó, and supervised by the examining magistrates.
Torturing those accused or suspected of crimes or their accomplices was an accepted part of judicial process in what the English historian Bindoff called ‘an age of paid witnesses, faked testimony, of prosecuting counsel who were allowed to do almost anything they liked, and defendants who were allowed no counsel at all’.4 It was institutionalised all across central Europe, and was unquestioned until the eighteenth century (and even then it was criticised as being an inefficient and counter-productive way of obtaining evidence, rather than as immoral or inhumane).
The methods of torture did not depend on sadism or arbitrary cruelty on the part of the torturers. Nevertheless it was well known that the quality of evidence produced in this way was likely to be inferior, and it was probably George Thurzó himself who struck out the words ‘et tortura’ in the draft of the report sent to the King about the executions of Elisabeth’s accomplices, presumably to lend more credibility to their forced confessions.
The skill of eliciting such confessions entailed more than causing physical pain. By Elisabeth’s day the inquisitorial process had undergone 200 years of refinement, culminating in handbooks for inquisitors which instructed them in exactly what should be asked, and what responses could be expected in a prescribed sequence of interrogation. In a telling precedent the Knights Templar – members of a hardened and supremely disciplined chivalrous order – had been forced in the fourteenth century to submit to interrogation. At first these warrior-monks proudly rejected all the accusations made against them, but once the torturer’s expertise was brought to bear they confessed at length; in their delirium they scoured their imaginations for the most elaborate blasphemies and abominations to admit to. If paragons of knighthood were helpless before the rack, how much less resistant would a loutish young manservant and three elderly women have been?
The expert in charge of the torturing, usually the local executioner, would be a professional, rewarded for his services, typically by a fixed cash payment for each instrument applied.5 Executioners lived well, but were local pariahs – the word executioner, hóhér, was a term of abuse (applied by her judges to Elisabeth Báthory and later by Lady Listhius to her despised husband) and even their touch was regarded as a cause of lifelong shame. The chief torturer would begin by displaying the instruments of torture to the subject, who would have been stripped naked and restrained: this in itself might prompt a first confession. The standard panoply included wooden wall- and floor-stocks, iron vices serving as finger-screws, iron collars spiked on the inside, the boot – a wooden or metal cylinder with studs on the inside that could be tightened by the driving in of wedges. There were also two-foot-long metal pincers and flails consisting of slender barbed chains attached to a wooden handle. Next, some of the array of torture devices would be placed on the victim’s body. The mere touch of the thumbscrews or the iron boot would concentrate the subject’s mind, but, if this was not enough, the various tools were put to work, starting with the agonies of crushed fingers and legs and proceeding if necessary through lighted matches under the finger- and toenails via the rack (either an upright bench or ladder on which the suspect was stretched with the aid of weights or a rectangular frame from which the subject was suspended) and the strappado to scourging, burning, branding, boiling and whatever local refinements were in vogue.6
In the twentieth century Hungary has a particular tradition of relishing the romantic barbarism of the exotic past in its popular fiction:
But the real days of celebration were those when to cheer up the folk, to excite their fighting spirit, the magister torturarum, imported especially for the task, prepared and laid out his instruments of practice. This was the time for the hoisting up, the scorching with slow fire, the crushing of bones. This was a most effective method for quickening the lazy blood that was turning to whey in the veins. It was gaudy amusement, cruel amusement.7
After Ficzkó had replied to the interrogators’ questions, it was the turn of the women – they are invariably described in the literary sources as ‘crones’, but we know nothing of their appearance or manner, only that they were all three elderly.
The next ‘accomplice’ to confess was the woman Helena Jó, widow of a certain Stephen Nagy. She informed the investigators that she had served the Lady for ten years (either the information was wrongly recorded or she was minimising her involvement – she must have been with Báthory for eighteen or nineteen years at least) and had acted as wetnurse to the Lady’s two daughters and to her son Paul (she did not mention Andrew and Ursula, the other boy and girl born to Elisabeth, which suggests that they had died almost at birth). She knew that the crimes that her employer had committed had begun before she arrived, but during her service her mistress had killed many girls – perhaps more than fifty, but she could not be sure. She did not know whose children they were, but could remember some instances: a girl named Zichy murdered in Ecsed, George Jánosy’s younger sister, a well-born girl from Pol’any, the two Sittkey women.