by Tony Thorne
Szilvássy was a senior and trusted servant who offered vivid eyewitness descriptions of his mistress’s sadism as well as the usual hearsay; the modern reader is bound to want to ask, as the examining authorities seem never to have done, ‘Why did you do nothing, tell no one?’ (The earlier witness, Deseő, had provided an answer to this unasked question. He claimed, like some others who testified, that he had wanted to stop serving the Countess and that Imre Megyery had asked him to stay on. This hints at a promise by Megyery to protect Elisabeth’s attendants if they gave evidence against her, but it does not excuse them for remaining silent in the past, in some cases for years.)
One more loose end is left untied by Jacob Szilvássy’s deposition in this round of hearings and it concerns the book that the woman Susannah claimed Szilvássy had seen, in which Elisabeth Báthory had recorded the number of her victims as 650. How Szilvássy was supposed to have stolen a glance at this most secret document was never explained, but by the time he came to give his evidence the inquisitors and most of the population of the family estates must have heard of this little book and its shocking contents. According to the record, when Szilvássy had his chance to speak he said nothing about it at all. If we decide that the existence of the book was a fantasy or a fabrication, it is still easy to see where it might have come from. The servants must have been fascinated by the locked cabinets, chests and travelling trunks that filled their employer’s private rooms and into which they would never be permitted to pry. When the Countess was sent to the high castle in disgrace, she was allowed to take with her a little box, perhaps the same box that Ficzkó had said was part of her magical paraphernalia, or the box containing her will and her private letters that her son Paul took possession of when she died (perhaps they were one and the same).
The remaining witnesses add only incidental detail to the evidence already collected, with the exception of John Dezső who, like Anna Szelesthey, accuses the Countess of murdering his relative – and even announcing that she would do so – but frustratingly fails to explain what steps, if any, he or the girl’s immediate family took against her.
Modern legal experts who have considered the conduct of the trial of the accomplices – foremost among whom is the Hungarian judge Dr Irma Szádeczky-Kardoss, whose distant ancestor, Caspar Kardoss, was co-presiding in 1611 – have declared it a travesty, and have pointed to the similarities between the whole investigation with its accumulation of unproven and often contradictory accusations, followed by a hasty trial before a hand-picked court, and the show trials of the communist era in which names were systematically blackened, guilt was imputed, then assumed.
There are certainly many unusual aspects to the gathering of testimonies and the trial, not the least being that the principal accused was not present. But there was method in the Palatine’s bending of the rules and precedents. Firstly, it seems clear that the arrest and the trial of the servants had been carefully planned well in advance, and was not put together in response to the dramatic ‘discoveries’ at the manor-house in Čachtice. The examining authorities were all present and ready to start the proceedings one day after the arrests, on New Year’s Day, and the jury took only days to assemble. This accelerated timetable not only allowed the key personalities in the case to be disposed of without interference, but, given the season, would prevent news reaching the outside world until the case had been decisively closed.
The only permitted circumstances in which a nobleman or woman could be condemned without a formal summons being issued first were if the accused was caught red-handed in the act of murdering someone of equal status. The status problem was never clarified in the case of the girl found dead at the manor-house, but, by stating that he had come upon Báthory in the act of torturing, Thurzó was able to justify his instant sentence upon her. Even in such a case, precedent demanded that there be at least seven persons of high rank on hand to pronounce judgement. There were not. Thurzó’s secretary, George Závodský, claimed in his journal that his master had been in the company of Zrínyi, Drugeth and Megyery at the scene of the crimes, but this is not so. Although all three had probably supplied men for the raid on the village, the sons-in-law did not arrive until after the Countess had been removed to the castle. So it was Thurzó alone, or Thurzó and Megyery, who dispensed summary justice to her.’19
Such irregularities were not unknown in seventeenth-century Hungary: there were recognised traditions of ‘alternative’ forms of justice, two of which Thurzó may have had in mind at different stages of the Báthory affair. The first was the so-called ‘family court’ whereby the senior members of noble families gathered privately to deal with offences committed by relatives that threatened the honour or prosperity of the whole dynasty. Although unofficial, this method of judgement had been sanctioned at the highest level, since it was the way in which the Habsburg family were thought to have persuaded the eccentric Emperor Rudolf II to abdicate in favour of Archduke Matthias. In the case of Hungarian noble families, the objective was usually to isolate and neutralise the offending family member. If the person concerned was female, she would often be placed in a convent, and Thurzó is said to have considered this fate for Elisabeth Báthory. The other type of case in which normal legal processes were often sidestepped was where sedition or sorcery were involved, and in many ways the trial and condemnation of Elisabeth Báthory’s manservant and confidantes most resembles a witch-trial, although it was she, and not they, who were accused, almost in passing, of practising black magic.
By royal decree, the trial documentation for capital crimes had to include a medical certificate relating to the victim or victims, and this was not done in the case of Báthory’s accomplices, although a medical report was attached to the papers at a later stage. It was not an official coroner’s report, but a deposition made by a bonesetter named Thomas Borbély who declared that he had cured a girl named Anna who was a member of Elisabeth Báthory’s court, almost certainly the same person who was displayed to the people of Čachtice immediately after the raid. He detailed the wounds that the girl had exhibited: there were four deep lacerations, two on her shoulders, two on her buttocks, and another serious wound on the back of her hand. There was pus in the wounds when Borbély attended the girl, but after two months in bed she recovered and the doctor was paid 56 florins and 15 pounds of corn by order of Count Thurzó.20
Other oddities which have been pointed out are the obvious ones: potential star witnesses such as the surviving maids and seamstresses – the ‘little Cseglei’ mentioned by Helena Jó for one – were never called. Those who did testify were not cross-examined about their own guilt or complicity. The many cadavers were not exhumed, even though it was known where they were supposed to have been buried – in the village churchyards of Lesetice and Kostol’any, for instance.
Why were all the investigations focused on the west of the country closer to Vienna, when torturing girls would have been so much easier in the more remote and lawless east? Even though witnesses mentioned murders which were carried out at Füzér castle in eastern Hungary, none of the castle staff from there or from Szécskeresztúr or Ecsed were interviewed as far as we know. Could this have been because they would have been less easy to intimidate? They might have felt that their interests lay with the Báthory rather than the Nádasdy patrimony; they were living beyond George Thurzó’s ambit and were probably weighing up the prospect of declaring for his rival the Transylvanian Prince if the chance arose.
When we look at the choice of witnesses, there are definite criteria being applied: although both lowly peasants and members of the minor gentry were called and heard, no senior aristocrats were summoned – to do so would have been a serious slur on individual families and the ruling class as a whole. But, if it was unthinkable for the country’s elite to appear in person, there was nothing to stop them sending their familiars to speak on their behalf; no servant of the Sittkey family came forward to corroborate the death of their relations, and why should the Zichys
have remained silent, if their daughter had been killed? (It was Count Zichy, not a simple country squire, but a man of influence, who had written in admiring terms to Elisabeth four years earlier.)
Some of the witnesses and the supposed victims – and the Nádasdy-Báthory family themselves – were interrelated by blood and marriage, which casts more doubt on the objectivity of the investigation. Imre Megyery, the familiar of the Nádasdy family who was appointed as Paul Nádasdy’s tutor, was related by marriage to the Szép family who were in turn related to the legal official Caspar Ordódy and to the witness Katherine Dömölky. Megyery was also related to the Szelesthey family, one of whom was a victim of Elisabeth and another a witness testifying against her. The Szelestheys, the Megyerys and the Nádasdys were all related to the Sittkeys, two of whose daughters were alleged to have been killed by Elisabeth. The presiding investigator Syrmiensis was a familiar of the Thurzó household and was also related to Daniel Pongrácz, the part-owner of Beckov, whose serfs provided so much damning testimony in Nové Mesto nad Váhom.
In a painstakingly thorough review of the judicial aspects of the case, the Hungarian legal expert Irma Szádeczky-Kardoss appointed herself counsel for the defence and after considering the whole body of written evidence and the personal and family connections between witnesses and prosecutors, exonerated Elisabeth in her conclusions. When this author asked her to assume the prosecuting role and asked her whether she would have had enough evidence to bring a case, she said she would not have.
But we must not expect the citizens of seventeenth-century Hungary to conform to modern notions of legality or fairness.
There is another letter in the Thurzó family archives which no one who has written on the Báthory case seems to have commented on at any length. Yet it is one of the most surprising and revealing of the few documents that have come down to us, and it draws together more than one strand of the complex network of events and personalities that we have to contend with. It is a letter dispatched by Count Sigmund Forgách, the Chief Justice of Hungary, to the Palatine, George Thurzó. Forgách was an ardently pro-Habsburg Catholic who was related to Thurzó through his stepfather and a man who hated Gábor Báthory and his supporters inside Hungary (Forgách in his parallel role as captain-general of the armies of Upper Hungary had invaded Transylvania the previous year to try and unseat the Prince), so this was someone with no reason to side with Elisabeth Báthory. Nevertheless on this occasion, 16 February 1612, just over a year into Elisabeth’s captivity, Forgách wrote from Bratislava:
We should have hoped not to have written this letter to you regarding an affair of this kind, but as the subject calls in question your honour and your reputation, we have no other choice but to inform you of it.
In the last few days you have gone to Čachtice and your beloved wife has gone up into the castle, and there she had the treasury opened by force and removed a larger number of objects and money, too. We have registered all the articles that have been taken away by her. However, your wife then went to the manor-house below, where she did the same; had the treasury opened by force and took away with her a large quantity of valuables. We were informed of this matter by Lord George Homonnay and the young orphaned Lord Nádasdy, both of whom resented the fact that your wife could act thus against their family. However, rumours are spreading among the people that she would not have done this without your knowledge and permission.
As we are entrusted by our office to defend all the helpless and the orphaned throughout his Majesty’s Kingdom of Hungary, and as we, together with yourself, are charged with upholding justice; therefore I warn and solemnly require you, not only as my brother, but in the authority of my office, to hand back in full all the goods and monies which were taken from Čachtice by your wife as soon as possible. We can promise and assure you that we will call together certain wise and well-skilled men of law even from the Council of his Majesty to examine the said case, and if they should find something from these goods belonging lawfully to your wife, she will have it. But, if you will not accede to our advice, we will pass legal sentence upon you, and you will suffer more damage for the goods taken than their worth to you. Because we must account for our duties before Almighty God, therefore we cannot desert the young orphaned lord in his need for justice. I am bound to advise you of this matter.21
This startling development and the document that records it illuminate some murky corners of the affair. The letter firstly proves that Elisabeth really was closely confined at Čachtice, and not in a position to stop Elisabeth Czobor from seizing her valuables – her detention was no mere sham to appease the King or the public. It also makes very clear that Elisabeth Báthory still had some of her treasures intact, not only in the manor-house in the centre of Čachtice, but also in the high castle where she was detained. It is unthinkable that the Palatine’s wife, who may have wanted to use some of the Báthory treasure as gifts, or to finance her daughter Barbara’s wedding later that year, would have attempted this crude manoeuvre on her own initiative, as Forgách well knew. Once again, as she did just prior to Countess Báthory’s arrest, Thurzó’s wife assisted him in his persecution of the Báthorys.
The incident underlines the helplessness of the isolated widow, but also proves that Thurzó’s actions were not inspired, as has been claimed, by friendship for the Countess or by aristocratic solidarity. As in his dealings with other less powerful neighbours, he was quite ready to use force to get what he wanted – in this case jewels and cash – and to risk the offence to the honour of his fellow-lords Paul Nádasdy and George Drugeth into the bargain (one wonders, too, what Lady Anna and Lord Nicholas Zrínyi, by now a loyal pro-Habsburg Catholic, made of this incident: there is no mention of their protest). The letter is also quite remarkable for the fact that it directly challenges the Palatine himself and calls him to account. Forgách, carefully speaking from within his official remit, is warning Thurzó that, in the great ruthless dance of the contending dynasties, even he cannot act with impunity.
There is no record, unfortunately, of the outcome of this affair, but we can be fairly sure that on past precedent Thurzó would try every stratagem, legal or otherwise, to avoid returning his booty to its rightful owner. As a footnote, it is interesting that on 30 September 1612 Elisabeth Czobor and George Thurzó hosted a celebration in the painted wedding-house (the finest in the Kingdom) in the grounds of their castle in Bytča. The feasting followed the marriage of their favourite daughter Barbara to Count Christopher Erdődy, and among the names of the guests are those of the lords Nicholas Zrínyi and Paul Nádasdy.22 It may seem strange that the relatives of a woman who has just been stripped of her valuables should pay their respects at a wedding hosted by the robbers, but this incongruity illustrates an essential difference between modern attitudes and the codes of the seventeenth century. Life was indeed ruled by codes, which were observed in spite of personal feelings and which served to prevent a slide into anarchy: The relationships between the aristocratic holders of high office were of crucial importance, and individuals might work together in government while struggling to best one another in the savage and unceasing game of self-enrichment. It was universally understood that power, and skill in exercising power, were the beginning and end of public life – of all social interactions, in fact. If an opportunity presented itself, it was normal to take it, whether it was the annexing of a parcel of land or the emptying of a neighbour’s treasure-chest. Paul Nádasdy and Nicholas Zrínyi were bound to George Thurzó by family ties, by their duties to the nation and by traditions of honour: they could not lightly break with their ‘uncle’.
On 24 January 1613 the King wrote again from Vienna to the Palatine in Bratislava ordering the start of the trial. His renewed interest in Countess Báthory’s fate coincided with peace negotiations between Gabór Báthory and the Habsburg court.23
It is conceivable that Gábor could have tried to enforce his own claim on Elisabeth’s lands, had they been confiscated after a political trial;
if he had succeeded, this would have been disastrous for Thurzó and the Hungarian aristocracy. The Habsburg inner court had been weakened by the conflict between the Archduke Matthias and the Emperor Rudolf, and the occupation of Elisabeth’s properties, so near Bratislava and Vienna, would also have been a strategic catastrophe for them. The next Prince of Transylvania, Gábor Bethlen, did succeed in occupying land in Royal Hungary, but not enough to destabilise the Kingdom. It was unthinkable for Gábor Báthory to risk an invasion of Hungary west of the Tisza just to free his aunt, but while she languished under house arrest without trial he had a pretext for subversions and an opportunity for making propaganda.
To understand fully the political backdrop against which the arguments over Elisabeth’s fate were conducted, it will be necessary to make one more excursion into the history books to consider the brief and frenetic career of ‘Crazy Gábor’ Báthory, the family’s last hope.
When the handsome, wild and arrogant seventeen-year-old was elected to the throne of Transylvania, the unanimous view was that, although he possessed virtually no land there, he was someone born to rule. Behind Prince Gábor stood his mentor and supporter, Gábor Bethlen, who understood the realities of the region’s politics and understood the ways of the Turks and was instrumental in getting the Sublime Porte’s agreement to Báthory’s enthronement. Within recent memory there had been terrible years in Transylvania; in 1603 and 1604, ‘indeed man had become a wolf to man, and reduced by pestilence, famine and spoliation to the utmost misery, those who could afford it bought human flesh sold openly on the market. . .’24 But the rule of the ‘Fairy Prince’ began with the very highest expectations. From 1608 onwards the economy prospered and harvests were good, and after the frozen anxiety of the previous years, the people easily put away their recollections of Prince Sigmund and Cardinal Andrew’s shortcomings and let themselves believe that the return of a Báthory would restore the splendours of King Stephen’s reign. The new Prince based his administration in Alba Julia, a city which had itself been renovated and restored to latinate luxury, and the court that he and his favourites created quickly became celebrated for its gaiety and swashbuckling vitality.