Rogues Gallery Uncovered
Bad behaviour in period costume
A non-judgmental stab into the scandalous lives of history’s greatest libertines’ lotharios and complete bastards
This podcast contains adult themes and a touch of colourful language – this one also has descriptions of some really unspeakable cruelties so be warned.
Really Horrible Boss
Torture, psychopathy and witchcraft
With the 17th century’s lowest rated employer
Elizabeth Bathory – the blood countess.
This episode might be a touch shorter than normal as I’m currently on my holidays and had to make this episode and last weeks during a very busy Sunday while simultaneously trying to find my passport.
I hope the gore and insanity makes up for it - this is not one of my saucier episodes.
Anyway
The following tale is written in the present tense of the period in which its set…. and as such, may contain attitudes and opinions of the protagonists and their times which would today be considered unacceptable.
As I’m not a 17th-century Hungarian court official outraged by brutal crimes but only if they happen to posh people, those attitudes and opinions are OBVIOUSLY not mine.
UPPER HUNGARY 1610
Countess Elizabeth BATH OR E Báthory de ETCH AIRD Ecsed you are charged that on or around 1585 and this year you did commit the following crimes.
That you did lure adolescent peasant girls to be your servants with the promise of lucrative positions and then did treat them most shamefully.
That you did keep your servants so tightly chained at night their extremities spurted blood.
That you did strip your servants naked and force them to stand outside in the freezing cold until they died.
That you did beat your servants so badly that the walls of your home were spattered with blood and that you once made so much noise while doing it that your neighbours were sorely inconvenienced.
That you regularly burned your servants with heated irons, keys and coins which you would apply to the soles of their feet and to their nether parts.
That you would stab your servants with knives and tear at their tender areas with your own teeth.
That you would insert needles under the fingernails of servants who had made mistakes while sewing. Then announce “ If it hurts the whore she may pull it out” and when the girl did this you would cut off the injured finger with a knife.
That you did strangle a servant to death with a silk scarf in “The Turkish Way”
That you made servants sit and bathe in stinging nettles causing grave discomfort.
That you did starve your servants, and only allow them to drink their own urine.
That you stitched your servant’s lips together with twine.
That you cut from your servants their own flesh and forced them to eat it.
That you smeared a servant in honey and left her tied outside in summer to be attacked by ants, wasps, and flies.
In addition to these charges you are also said to have…..
..Slept with two corpses beneath the floor of your bedroom, which you fed as if they were alive.
Prepared magical potions with which to poison your enemies.
Invited young female daughters of minor nobles to your castle to learn “Etiquette” and manners before torturing killing and burying them in unmarked graves.
Cast spells in order to create a magical cloud that would maliciously disgorge ninety cats.
And
Engaged in lewd acts with several men of the lower orders - including the strongman known as “Ironhead.”
The defence has painted a picture of a woman from one of the most prominent families in Central Europe – highly educated and privileged but with harsh parents.
Its said you were inured to death and suffering from an early age.
As a child we have testimony that when you witnessed a man convicted of theft being sewn in to the body of a dead horse and then left to rot along with its corpse. Instead of showing fear and revulsion you burst out laughing.
There is no doubt the defence maintain that following your marriage at the age of 11 to the war hero Lord Ferenc FER ENS Nadasky – who was 15 at the time -your combined wealth and power has made you the target of jealousy and greed from noble men and her own family – who have conspired to spread virulent rumours about your behaviour
That your late husband Lord Ferenc FER ENS Nadasky had a reputation for strength, you worked hard to maintain after his death is not in doubt.
A harsh but fair man, when you secretly gave birth to the child of a peasant boy with whom you were enjoying carnal relations during one of his many military absences – he forgave you the transgression and your giving away of the child. He did however find the peasant boy, castrate him and then throw him from the castle ramparts to be torn apart by wild dogs.
In many successful campaigns against the Ottomans his bravery and eagerness for violence earned him the title of “The Black Knight of Hungary”
Who can forget how he would play football with the severed herds of his Turkish prisoners and then hilariously dance with their corpses – all good fun, but this is a more serious matter
Some have said that it was indeed your husband and his enthusiasm for harsh discipline who turned your mind towards thoughts of torture and pain.
Witnesses state that it was he who devised the punishment of inserting rolled up pieces of oil-soaked parchments between the toes of servant’s girls who had failed to please and then setting them alight.
A practice that its said brought you both joy.
He is also said to have gifted you a special glove with sharply clawed fingers with which you were to slice the faces of other displeasing domestic help.
The defence has also stated that the arrival in your household of a sinister woman by the name of Anna Darvolya in 1601 heavily influenced your behaviour.
We do not know if her madness encouraged yours but it seems apparent that while before she arrived you had been cruel torturer, after her arrival you began to indescriminally kill.
As she sadly died of a stroke a few years ago we cannot put her to the question and learn what her motives may have been.
You husbands illness, paralysis and eventual death is also said to have been a contributing factor in unhinging your mind.
Whatever the reason the number of young girls who entered your castle never to return began to attract the attention of the local authorities.
They were blamed- by you- on Cholera – although it was only the servant girls who seemed to succumb.
A priest who confronted you about the number of funerals he was holding for these girls was faced with the full force of your fury.
You also claimed that one of the girls had gone insane and killed the rest. An obvious untruth that prompted many of the parent to petition the king for a full investigation
This appeal was granted and when one of the crown appointed officials suspected that you had tried to poison him when he visited you at the castle you were placed under close observation.
On new years day 1610 you were overheard along with on of your accomplices chanting an incarnation calling for your protection and the death of the investigator.
When- accompanied by armed guards – he forced entry to your residence he found a mutilated servant girl slumped in a doorway and in a hidden chamber the ghastly tools, blood soaked floor and butchered remains of several more victims.
One of whom some more of your accomplishes were in the process of torturing.
Since then, a total of at least one hundred and fifty bodies have been removed from your property – I have heard reports that you have admitted to the death of over six hundred individuals although you have not confirmed that to this assembly.
Your favoured servants and accomplices who willingly took part in your unholy activities have already felt the full weight of the law.
TWO have had their fingers ripped from their hands with red hot pokers before being burned at the stake.
A dwarf named “Ficko” was shown leniency, as it was clear he had been bullied and manipulated into his crimes…he was humanely beheaded… before being burned at the stake.
Had you kept your excessive discipline confined to those of the lower orders your wealth and social position might have seen you relocated to a nunnery where you could have spent time in sincere repentance.
However, your treatment of those of noble birth has forced this court to make an example of you to show we take a dim view of mass murder - outside of warfare.
You are sentenced to be sealed brick by brick into a single room where you shall remain for the rest of your life without contact with fresh air, sunlight or the kindness of your fellow man.
I would like to remind this court that embellishing this tale to include accusations of blood bathing, blood drinking and searching for eternal youth in order to create some kind of gothic legend is strictly forbidden
There’s no doubt that Elizabeth was an unhinged psychopath – at the very very least seriously mentally unwell.
She is regarded as one of the first recorded serial killers although some suggest that the more lurid or fanciful of her crimes were made up by powerful families who were jealous of her power and who wished to blacken her name.
Although blackening the name of someone who has already been convicted of mass murder seems a bit excessive.
Actually, convicted is not necessarily true,
Because of her high-status Elizabeth was spared the indignity of a public trail, all of the accounts of her crimes come from a series of private sessions to determine her guilt.
That’s also why she was isolated for life rather than being executed – although many would say that a harsher punishment.
Bathory was unrepentant to the last, claiming that it was her servants who did the killings and when the lead investigator made an attempt to get her to acknowledge and admit to her crimes she gave him a mouthful of foul language, that caused him to say
“ . You, Elizabeth, are a wild animal.
You are in the last months of your life.
You do not deserve to breathe the air on the earth or see the light of the Lord.
You shall disappear from this world and shall never reappear in it again.
As the shadows envelop you, may you find time to repent your bestial life.
In 1614 she complained that her hands were cold and told to shut up and go back to bed, she never woke up.
No one shed a tear.
It was in the centuries after her death that all the stuff about her drinking blood and bathing in virgins’ blood to stay youthful started to appear.
It’s all bollocks
I’ve read somewhere that when he family crypt was opened in 1995 her remains were no longer there – but that might be nonsense too.
There are countless books and documentaries that go into her grisly story in far more detail than I and although the angry investigator predicted that Elizabeth Bathory would be forever forgotten by man she seems to have gained more lasting fame that any of her contemporaries and as a horror icon and true crime celebrity.
There’s probably a pithy observation to be made about that but I can’t be bothered to think of one.
Next week on Rogues gallery uncovered
Doing it Geek Style
Ego, sex and extreme statue vandalism
With
Alcib iades of Athens – Ancient Greece’s Handsome, Vain, Bisexual, Power Hungry, Spoilt, Celebrity Love Machine.
This luxury length episode is inspired by the fact that I will have just got hoe from a holiday in Greece to will be feeling suitably Grecian – and probably ancient.
Don’t forget to stay in touch drop me a line at simon@roguesgallerynline.com link is in the show notes
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Have a great week and
Ill see you yesterday.
