How to evaluate the historical figure Elizabeth Bathory

The Báthory/Batory family is a famous noble family in Hungary and Poland. They were probably immigrants from the German region. In the 13th century, they received Bátor (in the Kingdom of Hungary and Transylvania) for their service. (on the border of the Principality of Nia) as a fiefdom and became a noble. This family later produced several princes of Transylvania, the Prime Minister of Hungary (nádor), the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania.

Elizabeth Bathory married Baron Ferenc Nádasdy when she was fifteen. Because the man’s title was lower than that of the woman, she did not change her husband’s surname after the marriage.

While her husband was fighting against the Ottoman Empire, she managed her husband's estate (a castle and seventeen villages), including providing public services to the local people. She also paid special attention to the Ottoman Empire. The wife of a soldier who died in the Imperial War, many letters show that she was a particularly responsible and helpful person.

Her husband died of illness in 1604, and before his death he entrusted his wife and heirs to Gy?rgy Thurzó, Prime Minister of Hungary, who began the official Investigating Elizabeth's possible crimes.

Before her husband died, there were already suspicions about the very high death rate of servants in her castle, and she was investigated for this, and the explanation she gave was that it was due to illness and accidents (this is very likely is a fact).

This kind of news became more and more intense, and even King Matthias II knew about it. In 1610, the king authorized the start of a formal investigation. The investigator was George Turzo, who interrogated 34 witnesses. However, no one said that they had witnessed the so-called crimes with their own eyes. They only said that they "heard it from others", and Elizabeth reiterated her previous explanation that there were epidemics in the castle and accidents often occurred.

It was in 1610 that Elizabeth wrote her will and divided her property equally among her three children. This incident caused great dissatisfaction to George Tulzo. At the end of the same year, a number of corpses with obvious signs of abuse were found around her castle, and Elizabeth was immediately arrested after these bodies were discovered.

Not a single witness took the stand at her trial, and none of her four advisers found her guilty. About 50 corpses were found in total, and later it was said that there were 650, but there was no evidence.

In this way, without witnesses and without direct evidence, Elizabeth was sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison in her castle, while three of her four advisers were sentenced to Death sentence, the other was acquitted.

In the trial, the judge was the king himself. At that time, the king owed Elizabeth a large debt, and if Elizabeth was sentenced, her property would become the king's property. This is probably the truth of this case, where the king and the prime minister conspired to frame a wealthy widowed noblewoman in an attempt to erase debts and seize her property.

The legend about her was not compiled until 1720, when a Jesuit collected information about her in a study of Hungarian aristocrats, including court records, folklore and The superstition about vampires has only since then transformed her image into a common image in popular culture today.