by Tony Thorne
The first witness was a widow from Sárvár of about thirty-six years old, Elisabeth, wife of the late John Sidoó. She said that Elisabeth Báthory had had three girls beaten to death after cutting their noses and lips, pushing needles under their fingernails and personally heating a key and a laundry iron with which she burned them. The girls were named as Miss Kate Birinyi or Perényi, Miss Szabatkay and Miss Draskóczy. The witness knew no more, except that wicked rumours of cruelty emanated from the court.
The second to testify was the young Susanna, wife of John (other sources have Stephen) Eötvös, also of Sárvár. She knew that the younger daughter of Gábor Sittkey died at the court after prolonged beating. She does not know the girl’s first name because she was always referred to simply as ‘Miss Sittkey’.
The third witness was Helena, the wife of Paul Gercsey, a noblewoman of about forty-five from Sárvár. She knew that Kate Fekete had been chained and died in Keresztúr. She witnessed girls being beaten and burned on the hands by Countess Báthory, and being ‘bathed’ in stinging nettles. Girls had needles pushed into their shoulders and their breasts were beaten by their mistress.
The fourth testimony was from the doctor, Ambrose Borbély, giving evidence for the second time. He claimed that Elisabeth Báthory often asked him for curing plasters, but that he knew no more, as he rarely visited the court.
The fifth witness was Anna Szelesthey, a fifty-year-old widow from Mihályfalva. This woman stated that she took Susan, her own daughter, to Elisabeth Báthory’s court, and she heard from certain persons that her daughter was beaten and tortured and that her flesh was torn from her body, and she died without hope of a cure. The witness heard of the torturing of many others, but did not see for herself, as she never entered the court.
Witness number six is one of the key figures in the affair, the court chamberlain at Sárvár, Benedict Deseő, who had been named by the first accused as someone deeply implicated in the crimes of his mistress, the Countess. Deseő, a man of around fifty, said he was very familiar with her cruelty and had seen some of the barbarities with his own eyes. But he had heard more about her actions from others. In his words, ‘the lady is so wicked that it is impossible to account for her actions and cruelties’. Among many other instances he saw the Lady force a girl called Helena to stand nude before her, and the Lady took a knife and cut her arms, beginning at the fingers and then going higher: the girl was then burned on both hands with a candle until she died. He also saw a young woman (he could not remember her name) whose lips were stitched together by the Lady, who also stitched her tongue. He saw a number of girls who were made to stand naked before the Lady and were beaten by her. She hurt their hands so badly that the wounds became infected and they could not work, but the Lady pressed them to work and, if they did not work with their mutilated hands, the Lady scolded them roundly and called them whores. And she took the needle again and pricked their fingers and arms. She deprived the girls of water and when they were standing nude before her and suffering from thirst, they would drink their own urine, if they had any.
Deseő had heard, he said, that the Lady would heat the smaller round laundry iron and push it into the girls’ vaginas. He knew for certain that two German girls were taken into her court, and straightaway they accompanied the Lady to Bratislava. On the way she gave them two ‘Slovak cakes’ to look after, which had been given to her by Francis Zempscey, but one of the maids ate one of the cakes, so the Lady had the remaining cake heated up and forced the girl to eat it, punishing her in this way. She later tortured the two German girls to death. There was a young bride called Modl, and the Lady cut off the flesh of her bottom and forced the girl to eat it raw. The girl died after torture at Sárvár. During the time that the Diet was sitting at Bratislava a young girl was tortured and died in Cseklész. One of the maidens’ bodies was buried near the privy by a certain Helena. The body was discovered and pulled out in pieces by dogs.
Deseő told the investigators that Báthory’s accomplices who had been hanged (sic) in Bytca could have added much more, and other officials of her court, in particular Jacob Szilvássy, Matthew Nagy and Gregory Pásztory, could say more about her cruelty, because they spent all their time at her court. ‘God knows what else she might have done! . . . We were only her servants and we constantly asked her to cease her terrible activities,’ Deseő claimed. The Lady had replied that she was not afraid because she had good advisers and supporters all over the country, and that a person of noble birth could not be detained without first receiving a formal summons to appear before a court. Deseő claimed that her staff had wanted to leave her service, but that Imre Megyery (her son’s tutor and supervisor of the Sárvár estate) had asked them to stay on until she moved to Čachtice.
The Gregory Pásztory (described as a squire of around forty, living on his own estate) named by Deseő was the next to be called. He claimed to know little, as his duty was to supervise the cultivation on the Sárvár estates, and he rarely attended the court. When he was there, he saw nothing himself, except for the slapping of girls’ faces, but he heard tell that many maidens were beaten and that many perished as a result. The Lady took him with her to Füzér when she held court there. At this point Pásztory repeats the story of the Modi girl suckling the log, adding that he heard that her breast was later cut off, but did not see it with his own eyes.
Pásztory then told how Elisabeth Báthory’s manservant Ficzkó had assaulted one of his servants, who had wanted to thrash him in return, causing Pásztory to complain to Ficzkó, who ran to his mistress and lodged complaints about him. The Lady had summoned Pásztory to her court and asked him about the quarrel between them. He had replied that his servant had been chastised for no reason by Ficzkó, and that Ficzkó was anyway a bad man, who gossiped about many strange and wicked things that he had seen in the court, including the fact that five dead girls were hidden there. The Countess promised to investigate the matter, but did nothing.
Pásztory also saw a large wooden box at Sárvár, which he was told was used to carry corpses out of the castle. A gentleman named Sebastian Orben told him that once he had asked the woman Helena what was in the box, but she refused to answer. On another occasion, he noticed a pair of chains and locks in a bag and asked Helena what she was carrying them for. She said that the maids were put in chains every night. He knew no more.
The eighth witness was thirty-seven-year-old Jacob Szilvássy, the bookkeeper and administrator of the castles of Léka and Keresztúr. He said, in words which echo Deseő, that it was impossible to account for all the Lady’s cruelties, because it would take ages. He could only attempt to summarise what he himself knew.
When she was holding court in Ecsed in 1606, an old soldier who was entrusted with the care of a thirteen-year-old girl took her to the court. The girl was sweet-tempered and always smiling and it seemed that she was loved by the Lady. Shortly afterwards she became pale and sickly (one version says that her guardian or father asked for her return, but that the Lady refused), and, when she was leaving the castle in a carriage which Szilvássy shared, he asked her about burns on her hands. She said that pieces of paper had been put between her fingers and that these had been lit. She was very thirsty, she said, as she had not drunk for five days. The witness gave her a cherry, but her condition worsened and before they could reach their destination she died in a village called Szedikerte. He was told, although he did not see it, that Elisabeth Báthory stood on the girl’s throat when she died. Her body was buried, but he did not know where. At the same time two other girls died, and their bodies were carried for days before being buried along the way to Prešov. Báthory, he added, also tortured with frost (another version says that on a frosty day she told the serving-girls to hold her dripping nose, then slapped and beat them).
The young daughter of the cobbler died at Füzér, and he had been told that before she died she said to Báthory’s face that she was a whore and would go to hell for her bestial crimes, whereas she, the boot
maker’s daughter, would go to heaven. The Countess asked the girl why she abused her, and the girl urged her to hurry up and finish her brutal work. He had heard that two other girls had died in her court, and a maiden called Dorica and another called Margaret were beaten and tortured and later died in Keresztúr. He saw that the Lady punctured Dorica’s belly with a great (some versions say rusty) needle, and in the very early morning he saw the bodies being removed, rolled up in a mat. He also heard that five girls had been buried in the grain pit; another girl died while the Lady was taking the waters at Piešt’ány. Szilvássy had also seen maidens standing quite naked in the presence of their mistress, and their bodies showed signs of injuries. At the time of Lord Homonnay’s wedding two German girls died at Čachtice. He himself saw Báthory thrust a dagger into one of them by the ferry at Bratislava.
Szilvássy also said that the executed accomplices could have added more details.
The following witness, a castle warden, Stephen Mártonfalvy, simply said that he did not know much about these things, although he had seen girls slapped. When he had heard about brutalities, he had no longer wished to serve the Lady.
John Dezső, the warden of Keresztúr, was the next to be questioned. He said that his cousin Katherine Berény had been living at the court and he had heard that she was being beaten by the Countess. He went to see her but was prevented from doing so by one of the old women. He later asked the Lady if he could speak to his cousin, but was told that he could see her only when she was leaving in the carriage for Čachtice. On the following day he came face to face with Katherine, who was crying and appeared to be very weak. He asked that she be allowed to return home with him, but this was refused. The Lady told him that she was going to kill his cousin and he had never seen the girl again.
The penultimate witness was John Zamobothny or Zambotny, a gentleman of about forty years of age. All he knew was that about twelve servants and girls had died and were buried. He had been ordered to have coffins prepared, but did not know how the victims had died.
The last person to testify was Mistress Barbara Bix, who ran one of the farms at Sárvár, a married woman of twenty-five. She had seen that girls were tortured and beaten by those who were burned at the stake in Bytča. The maidens were often made to sit on stinging nettles. She did not know their names. John Ficzkó had told her that they collected girls from all over the countryside. She had heard that they were burned with the laundry iron and she saw their wounds. The dead girl who was found in Čachtice when Báthory was arrested was called Szalai (another version has ‘was from Zala’).
If we look at these new statements in turn (and we must keep in mind that these are once again ‘confessions’ or depositions obtained without torture as far as we know, and without any further charges having been brought against anyone), there are interesting features in all of them.
The first witness, the widow Elisabeth, specifically names three of Báthory’s alleged victims. Of the names she gives, ‘Perényi’ and Draskóczy are those of noble families, indeed, the tenth witness in the same round of questioning confirms the death of his cousin, Katherine Berény, which is certainly the same person. The tortures that this Elisabeth mentions are among those already listed by previous witnesses.
The second witness refers to the death of one girl named Sittkey, a name mentioned by several earlier witnesses, who also were ignorant of the victim’s first name. Some other testimonies claimed that two Sittkey girls had been murdered.
Helena, the third witness, names a certain Kate Fekete as one of the victims: this name has been mentioned before by Andrew Lakatjártó. Helen also claims to have witnessed with her own eyes beating, burning and ‘bathing in nettles’, but the rest of her testimony seems to be hearsay.
The curious fact about the doctor Ambrose Borbély’s testimony is that he actually says less than he did at a previous hearing,16 whereas the natural tendency at this stage of the investigation, with the Countess safely incarcerated, would be to say more. Borbély’s reticence would make sense if, for instance, he was fearful of saying too much about his own real role in Báthory’s business. The fact that the Countess asked him for healing plasters is not in itself incriminating, but does show that amateur healing was being practised at the court.
Anna Szelesthey’s statement is maddeningly brief; she accuses Báthory of murdering her own daughter, but gives no details (at least, none was taken down by the transcribers) of where and when, or whether she ever saw her daughter’s body before burial. The form of words she uses ‘died without hope of a cure’ might suggest that sickness or disease was implicated; perhaps this had been the official explanation. This witness’s brother, Squire Adam Szelesthey, had testified previously and it is odd that the couple’s statements do not seem to complement each other – Adam had not even mentioned the death of his niece.
Benedict Deseő provides much fuller testimony about Elisabeth’s crimes, and well he might. The accomplices who had been burned nearly one year before had referred to him by name and suggested that he must have been more intimately involved than they in the atrocities committed by their mistress (to quote Ficzkó, ‘Deseő knew everything but did not warn the Lady’). Deseő’s evidence is a patchwork of stories told by earlier witnesses with several notable additions: he elaborates the affair of the insolent German servant, Miss Modi, by stating that she was forced into eating her own flesh by the Countess, a detail not mentioned by any other witness, but which comes, perhaps significantly, after the priest Ponikenus had first introduced the notion of cannibalism into the inquiry. The second novelty which Deseő relates is the story of the greedy German girl being forced to eat the ‘Slovak cake’. This has the ring of truth, but taken in isolation just confirms the picture of Báthory inventing punishments to ‘fit the crime’. Deseő extends the standard repertoire of abuses with his descriptions of the drinking of urine and the stitching of the victim’s tongue. (He does not explain how he, an ageing male, who implies that he did not spend all his time in her court, came to be present when naked girls were being tortured, presumably in the women’s quarters and in the laundry.)
The other interesting aspects of Deseő’s deposition are his eagerness to implicate his fellow-officials Szilvássy, Pásztory and Nagy, and his claim that Imre Megyery had urged the servants to remain with the Countess until she moved to Čachtice. This proves that Elisabeth’s journey at the end of 1610 to Čachtice, where she was arrested, was not a spontaneous attempt to flee the country, but a planned change of venue for the end-of-year celebrations, which those at the court in Sárvár were already aware of. It is even possible that they persuaded Elisabeth to go to Čachtice where she would present an easier target – the little town with its small complement of guards was isolated between the estates of the Palatine, those of his ally Illésházy and the hostile town of Nové Mesto.
Deseő’s reference to the tutor Imre Megyery disproves the entry in the diary of Thurzó’s secretary and prosecutor, Závodský, where it was noted that ‘even Megyery knew nothing [of the lady’s crimes]’.17
Pásztory, who was the next to testify, played down his involvement in the Countess’s affairs, although he had been named as one of her confidants. He tells the story against Ficzkó perhaps to devalue Ficzkó’s own statements, but it gives a picture of feuding servants that we know to be generally true, whatever the ins and outs, from Elisabeth Báthory’s letter to Thurzó complaining of Gáspar Tatay’s violence.18 He is, interestingly, the only witness to use the word ‘gossip’, although a great many of the testimonies imply that gossip was rife in and around the court.
Pásztory brings a new element to the developing theme of secret containers: we have had home-made coffins and incriminating documents in locked caskets; now we have the sinister accessory, the bag of chains and locks. A modern cynic might feel that Pásztory is slipping into place one of the missing pieces needed to build a convincing overall picture. No one had yet explained why none of the maidservants, some of w
hom must have been girls of spirit, had managed to get away: the chains, put on each night, provide the answer. But were they individually manacled, in which case a large number of chains would be required, or was the door of their dormitory simply padlocked shut? The records are silent, of course.
Jacob Szilvássy seems to be one of the most voluble of the witnesses, and we can imagine a man of some education who is, perhaps, more articulate than some of the simpler gentry who testify, and is also desperate to acquit himself of any suspicion (Helena Jó had stated before she was burned that ‘Szilvássy and the court steward Deseő both saw how the Lady tortured naked maidservants’). Szilvássy mentions again the practice of putting burning paper between the fingers, Lord Francis Nádasdy’s novel revival technique which understandably aroused the curiosity of the servants. This witness’s evidence is spiced with detail and pathos – the cherry given to the dying girl, the stabbing at the Bratislava ferry and the use of the giant needle, and, most affecting of all, the bravado of the doomed cobbler’s daughter. We are in no position to dismiss this exchange as a fantasy, but it is remarkable that the heroic girl’s last words had not passed into local folklore and were not mentioned by any other witness. Furthermore, it is interesting that Szilvássy, Deseő and an earlier witness, Sir Francis Török, who lived in the same county, use almost identical phrases in their testimonies, each of them exclaiming, ‘It is impossible to account for all her horrible deeds!’, ‘Only God could enumerate her crimes!’ and ‘Her wickedness is as boundless as the sea!’ This proves nothing – these may have been common forms of words – but it could suggest that the witnesses had been coached, or simply that they had prepared their testimonies together.