Vampires (16 page)

But the legend of Vlad the Impaler lived on. Stories of the atrocities he had committed during his reign of terror, on a hitherto unprecedented scale involving thousands of victims, continued to horrify Western Europe. He was alleged to have killed between 40,000 and 100,000 people during his campaigns, mostly by impaling them, and to have razed whole villages to the ground, burning thousands more innocent victims in their houses. However, in Eastern Europe, particularly in Romania, where he was regarded as a freedom fighter and a hero, these figures were said to be exaggerated.

The nature of the killings is also under dispute. In Germany, Vlad was alleged to be an insane sadist, whose crimes included burning, skinning, roasting, boiling, and drowning victims; forcing their relatives to eat their flesh; cutting off their limbs; nailing their hats to their heads; and torturing children and babies. He was particularly ferocious towards women, being apparently extremely concerned with female chastity. There are accounts that unmarried or adulterous women had their breasts and sexual organs cut out, and that they were impaled through the vagina with red-hot stakes. Merchants and workmen who cheated their customers, as well as common thieves, were also impaled, their bodies left out in the streets as a warning to others.

Today, many historians believe that these accounts were sensationalized. The tales were circulated in manuscript form in the fiftenth century, and with the invention of the printing press, became bestsellers. They undoubtedly had a political purpose, to set the German public against the Romanians. This was not surprising, since Vlad had shown great cruelty towards the Saxons in the past. In addition, the Hungarian king, Corvinus, had reason to blacken Dracula’s name. Corvinus needed to justify his failure to go to war with the Turks, so he accused Vlad of secretly supporting the Ottoman Sultan, along with many other negative stories, making him a scapegoat for his own cowardice.

But, as the old saying goes, there’s no smoke without fire. Vlad may not have been quite the deranged sadist that these stories made him out to be, but there is no doubt that he killed a large numbers of victims, often quite unnecessarily, and that impalement, a hideously painful form of torture and murder, was his preferred
modus operandi
.

Vlad perfected a method of impalement to create maximum pain before death. A large wooden stake would be sharpened and oiled. It was important not to sharpen the stake too much, otherwise the victim would die of shock immediately after the stake was forced into the body. The stake would then be inserted into the victim’s body through the anus, and forced right through until it came out of the victim’s mouth. In certain cases, the stake would be inserted into other bodily orifices, or pushed through the stomach or chest.

The victim would then be left outside to die a slow, agonizing death, in full view of passers-by. The process could go on for hours, or even days. Sometimes, the victim would be hung upside down. The height of the stake would indicate the person’s rank, and stakes would also be arranged in patterns, often around a village, town, or city that soldiers were targeting. Once the victim died, the body would be left on the stake, to rot away.

While the bloodthirsty crimes of Vlad the Impaler have gone down in history, there is no suggestion that he himself drank blood, or was thought to be a vampire. However, as Dracula, son of the ferocious Vlad Dracul, he gave his name to the most famous fictional vampire of all time, Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula.

How did this come about? In the story by Bram Stoker, Count Dracula lives in the ‘cursed land’ of Transylvania. The author’s original intention had, by all accounts, been to set the novel in Styria, a region of Austria. He had been inspired to do so by reading a book about a remote castle in the area,
Schloss Hainfeld, or a Winter in Lower Styria
by Captain Basil Hall, a noted British naval officer, traveller, and author. However, he then went on to read another book, entitled
Transylvanian Superstitions
by Emily Gerard, the Scottish wife of a Hungarian cavalryman. This was an account of the folklore of the forests in the region, telling of ruined castles, werewolves, and occult happenings. Gerard reported the local peasants’ belief in Nosferatu, the vampire who returned from the grave to prey on the living, and told of how they tried to ward off evil by hanging garlic over their front doors. This seemed to be fertile territory for a horror story, and thus Stoker decided to change his mind, and set his tale in the remote woodlands of Transylvania.

Stoker was also influenced by another important work of the period,
An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia
by one William Wilkinson, published in 1820. It is known that Stoker made notes on this book, using it to sketch out the background for his story. In this work, he found out about the principalities of Moldavia, Transylvania, and Wallachia (now Romania) , and came across the story of the notorious fifteenth-century prince, Vlad Dracul, and his son, Vlad Dracula. Stoker may also have heard about Vlad Dracula from his friend Armin Vambery, a Hungarian professor who was familiar with the history of the region. Whatever the case, the story of the crazed, evil Dragon Prince with a lust for blood piqued Stoker’s interest, and the vampire Count Dracula was born.

In recent times, some literary critics have questioned the idea that Stoker based his Count Dracula on Vlad the Impaler. They point instead to the legends surrounding Elizabeth Bàthory, a sixteenth-century Countess who sexually abused, tortured, and murdered scores of young women servants at her remote castle, allegedly bathing in their blood to keep her skin looking young.

The most likely scenario seems to be that Stoker, like any other fiction writer, drew inspiration from many sources, taking details from both history and legend to create a vivid romance of his own. It seems that he borrowed the name of Count Dracula for his tale, substituting it for the original name he had chosen for his protagonist, Count Wampyr. Other aspects of Dracula’s history, such as his fondness for impaling his victims on stakes, were left out, possibly because Stoker did not know very much about them. Certainly, by choosing to set his story in the remote forests of Transylvania, Stoker mined a rich seam of folklore and peasant superstition in the region.

Today, after the fall of Communism in Romania, the connection between Stoker’s Count Dracula and the historical figure of Vlad the Impaler has spawned a burgeoning tourist industry. Visitors from all over the world come to the country to visit Bran Castle, and the vast forests that surround it. Even though it is not known for sure if Vlad ever stayed there, it has become fixed in the public mind as ‘Dracula’s Castle’, its gothic turrets and remote position serving to underscore its legendary status as the home of the most celebrated literary vampire of all time. Recently, the castle hit the headlines after being returned to its owners, the Van Hapsburg family, 60 years after it was seized by the communists, and has now become one of Romania’s top tourist attractions.

 

The sixteenth-century Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory has gone down in history as the most prolific serial killer of all time, and some believe that she, alongside Vlad the Impaler and others, were inspiration behind Bram Stocker's
Dracula
. Báthory was accused of sexually abusing, torturing, and murdering up to 600 victims at her remote castle, all of them young girls and women, some of them virgins. There were eyewitness accounts of her mutilating the girls' genitals, and biting the flesh off their arms, legs, and faces. Legend has it that she also bathed in her victims' blood, in the belief that it would rejuvenate her, but whether or not this is actually true remains a matter of conjecture. Some historians have also argued that the number of her victims was exaggerated. But whatever the exact details of the case, it is clear that Báthory was a monstrously evil madwoman, whose sadistic treatment of her unfortunate maids went far beyond the callous cruelty towards servants considered acceptable by the nobility at the time.

 

 

Erzsébet Báthory, to give her Hungarian name, was born in 1560 in Nyirbator, Hungary. Her parents were related. Her father, George Báthory came from the Ecsed line of the Báthory family, while her mother, Anna, came from the Somlyo branch. The Báthorys were a powerful Protestant aristocratic family, whose members included princes, warlords, churchmen, and politicians. One of Elizabeth's cousins was the King of Poland, and another went on to become Palatine of Hungary. In order to preserve the purity of their heritage, the Báthory family encouraged intermarriage. This may have contributed to Elizabeth's insanity, which showed itself during her childhood in epileptic fits and uncontrollable rages. Her brother Stephan was also apparently afflicted by mental imbalance, and grew up to be an alcoholic and a notorious sex fiend.

 

 

As well as this poor genetic inheritance, the young Elizabeth's sanity may have been affected by witnessing her privileged family's extreme cruelty towards the ordinary people around them. The Hungarian nobility of the time treated their inferiors like animals and worse, and horrific retribution was meted out to anyone who crossed them. In one instance, Elizabeth witnessed the punishment of a gypsy who had been accused of theft. He was sewn into the belly of a horse, with only his head protruding, and left there to die. With such perverse acts of barbarism going on around her, it was hardly surprising that the young Elizabeth came to regard sadistic treatment of her servants as a normal way of life when she grew up.

There were, however, more positive aspects to Elizabeth's experience of childhood. Unlike most other Hungarian aristocrats, some of whom could barely read or write, she received a proper education in Latin and Greek. She was said to have been highly intelligent, and her beauty was also praised.

 

 

While still a child, she was betrothed to Count Ferenc Nàdasdy, a grown man who was renowned as a soldier and athlete. But then, at the age of 14, she became pregnant by one of the peasants on her father's estate. Elizabeth was sent away to live in the countryside and went on to give birth to a daughter. The child was left with a peasant couple and Elizabeth returned to public life.

A year later, Elizabeth married Nàdasdy in tremendous style. The Báthorys threw a huge, lavish wedding party with a guest list of 4,500 people. The Holy Roman Emperor himself, Maximillian II, was invited, although he could not attend, citing ‘the dangers of travelling in turbulent times' as an excuse. Instead, he sent a large delegation and expensive gifts. The event did much to further the prestige and political power of the Báthory family. What happened subsequently, however, did not.

 

 

Elizabeth moved with her new husband to the Nàdasdy estates around Castle Sàrvàr. Here the Nàdasdys had long held a reputation as cruel overlords, and Ferenc was no exception. He introduced his young wife, still an impressionable teenager, to various cruel ways of punishing their servants, encouraging her to treat them without pity or mercy. There were also rumours that the couple became involved in the occult, calling in black arts practitioners, and performing satanic rituals together.

When Ferenc left home to pursue his studies and his career as a soldier, Elizabeth was left on her own. To while away the time, she travelled between her various castles and took several lovers, even at one stage eloping with one of them, before meekly returning to her husband. She also visited relatives, but in the Báthory-Nàdasdy family, this was no respectable round of dull social events. As she soon found out, many of her family members were as sexually voracious as she was. In particular, she struck up a friendship with an aunt who was openly bisexual, and who had many lovers. All this seems to have been tolerated by her husband, and by Hungarian society in general. By all accounts, the Hungarian nobility wielded such power at this period that nobody dared to comment on their decadent way of life, a factor that again encouraged the young Elizabeth to indulge her perversions to the full.

 

 

Oddly enough, given this hectic sexual activity, Elizabeth found time to bear her husband three daughters and a son. Even more strange, by all accounts she was a kind, affectionate mother, and made sure that her children were well cared for. However, one of her wetnurses, Ilona Jó, later proved to be an accomplice in her crimes, as did several other servants in her entourage. It is yet another contradiction in this bizarre tale that these servants, who were so devoted to the care of young children, should have shown such barbarity in their behaviour towards others.

While her husband was away, Elizabeth took to staying in one of the family's more remote properties, the Cachtice Castle, which had been given to her as a wedding gift from her husband. Here, she used her considerable skills to run the family's business affairs, in some cases providing help and assistance to destitute peasant families. By now her husband was the chief commander of the Hungarian troops, and was engaged full time in fighting the ongoing war against the Ottomans. Elizabeth was charged with the job of defending the estates against incursions by Ottoman troops; the estates and castles were in strategic positions, including the route to Vienna and the Hungarian border.

 

 

Despite her busy workload, Elizabeth had begun to amuse herself with a pastime that would eventually lead to her downfall: torturing her servant girls. She especially liked to beat them with a barbed lash, or cudgel, and then have them dragged naked into the snow. Cold water would then be thrown on them so that they froze to death. She was helped in this gruesome enterprise by three rather sinister figures: Ilona Jó, her wetnurse; a large, imposing local woman called Dorothea Szentes, known as Dorka, who was reputed to be a witch; and a crippled dwarf, Johannes Ujvary, nicknamed Ficzko.

In 1604, Elizabeth's husband Ferenc died, ostensibly from an injury sustained in battle, although there were rumours that he had been attacked by a whore after refusing to pay her for her services. After his death, Elizabeth made Cachtice her permanent home – unfortunately for the local population, as it turned out. There, she took up with a woman named Anna Darvula, who became her lover. Like Szentes, Darvula was feared as a witch. It later emerged that Darvula was the most sadistic of Báthory's entourage, and that under her tutelage, Báthory became more savage than ever.