Some people say that women can do anything for their beauty and prettiness of their faces. Is that true? Are we capable of everything just to stay forever young and pretty? Answer this question is not simple. For some woman, ordinary cream with coconut oil is enough. But there are a lot of women who are doing some extreme things to their body just to stay young. They are going to painful cosmetic treatments, surgeries or they even inject blood in their skin.

However, the medical treatment with human blood is not an invention of our lifetime. One of the first or maybe the first one who use the human blood just to make her face younger and beautiful was Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory. She was known as the cruelest woman in Hungary and her nickname was Blood Countess. She was remembered as a countess who was hungry for blood and youth until the rest of her life and there is no certain evidence of a precise number of her victims. That number goes from 36 to 650.

Copy of an old portrait of Elizabeth Bathory, 16th century, author unknown, the original portrait desapired │ Source

Becoming a sadist

Elizabeth Bathory was born in Transylvania (now part of Romania), in1560 in very rich and famous family. A lot of her cousins become very powerful and important people. But some of them had really bad habits. Her uncle, people believed, was a member of the satanic group, her aunt was bisexual and she liked to torture maids and her brother Stefan was great sinner and drunk. Many members of her family had epilepsy or they suffered from madness and other kinds of psychological disorders. The causes of those illnesses probably were marriages inside of the family.

However, Elizabeth also had some bad habits even when she was just a child. She was a kid with problematic behavior. Her babysitters couldn’t control her that easy because she was very angry when she couldn’t take what she wished. According to some rumors as a child she liked to watch executions and punishments in the yard of the family castle. She saw very cruel punishments and learned that she can do anything by hurting others.

Borders of the Principality of Transylvania in 1570 │ Source

She was a really clever child. She learned Hungarian, Latin, and Germany so easily. But she also enjoyed wearing men’s clothes and playing games for boys. Nobody could control her, so as a teenager she got pregnant with one villager. She got a daughter, but they didn’t allow her to keep the child. The little girl was given to local villager family and Elizabeth has never seen her again. When she was 15 years old, they married her to Hungarian nobleman and famous warrior, Ferenc Nadasdy.

Her husband was a very busy man. He had to go to the different battles and she was at home alone all the time. But her spirit couldn’t stay like this for so long. Soon she found entertainment. Her new home became Cachtice castle and she made a torture house of it. She started many sexual relationships with a lot of men and women and discovered soon that she feels incredible joy only when she tortures them in a very brutal way. She was known as a very beautiful woman. But inside she was brutal and inhuman. She liked to torture her maids till the death. If someone tried to escape from her castle, the punishment was so cruel.




Portrait of the Ferenc Nadasdy │Source

One of her maids named Paula escaped but they found her soon and brought her back to the countess. Elizabeth put her in one big iron box and when the girl was inside she closed the door. A lot of sharp spikes immediately entered to victim’s body and poor girl died in pain.

She enjoyed watching naked girls in her yard during the cold winter nights. They were put there to freeze to death and Elizabeth ordered to her servants to put cold water on their naked bodies. If someone broke some of her rules, she had a special punishment for that. She put needles under the victim’s nails. That was just a small part of things that she did to her servants and maids. But the real joy or torturing and killing she felt because of something else.

Blood of the victim as youth elixir

She desperately needed to stay young and beautiful. And she realized that the fresh blood of young girls can help her with that. This discovery came suddenly ― she hit one of her maids and the blood from the girl’s nose burst on her own face. She realized that wrinkles from her face started to despair because of the blood. From that moment her servant had to bring young and beautiful girls to her castle. She killed them and took their blood just to use it on her skin. She believed that in that way she can stay forever young. Even when she was ill and she couldn’t get up from the bed, she demanded from her servants to bring young girls near to her bed and then she bit the victim so hard that she took the meat from the body.

Ruins of the Cachtice Castle│Source

It was easy for her to find the girls. Most of them were from villager family. They were poor and all of them came to the castle because they wanted to work there as maids. They didn’t have protection and they were easy prey. The countess was rich and powerful and she had a lot of important friends. Nobody could harm her in any way. In that time villager people didn’t have any power and noblemen could do whatever they wanted with servants and poor village people. But, with years a lot of girls were killed and countesses’ servants had a real problem with hiding and burying dead and massacred bodies. People who lived nearby the castle started to be aware of terrible crimes. They realized that a lot of girls despaired and some of the bodies were found. Step by step, everybody realized that Countess Bathory was responsible for everything.

But, poor people had to wait for the justice. Elizabeth was finally ruined, when she lost the trust of the most important person in Hungary ― king Matthias II. Her husband was very rich and he borrowed a lot of money to the crown. When he died, Elizabeth wanted the money back because the killing was really expensive entertainment. The king decided to ruin her. He knew that she will stay without everything and the lands, castle and all of her money will be taken and given to him. So, he decided to do everything so she can be accused of murders. Because of this a lot of people today think that Elizabeth Batory actually was innocent and that her enemies made everything up just to take her money.

The emblem of the Bathory family│Source

Punishment

One of her accomplices brought the list of 650 names of the killed girls, written by the hand of the Elizabeth. That was the main proof that she was guilty. The court decided to punish countess with life imprisonment. They put her in one room in her own castle and built a wall on the place for entrance. They left a small hole for the food so they can feed her. She was burry alive in her own killing house. Some of the people claimed that she died because she couldn’t get more blood and that she was the most beautiful woman in Europe from that time, even she was fifty-four.

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