Countess Dracula (33 page)

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
Č
achtice 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
Č
achtice 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
Č
achtice, 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
Č
achtice, 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 Byt
č
a. The feasting followed the marriage of their favourite daughter Barbara to Count Christopher Erd
ő
dy, 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.

Back in Hungary, however, the pro-Habsburg faction led by the Catholic Forgách was determined to frustrate Gabor's rise to power. The Calvinist Gábor chanceller, Stephen Kendy, leader of the Catholic aristocracy in Transylvania, was already in secret discussions with Catholics inside Hungary, and Radu Sherban, the Voivode of Wallachia, a protégé of Basta (the murderous Habsburg general who had laid waste the Principality) and inheritor of the pro-Habsburg policy of Michael the Brave, was tentatively putting out feelers in Vienna, offering to stab Báthory in the back. Oblivious to all this, the merry Prince was travelling from feast to feast on a progress around the country which he hardly knew.
²⁵

From a time, Gábor was forgiven for courting beautiful women while hiding his ugly wife, but it quickly became apparent that his noisy feasts and flagrant promiscuity were not simply the pardonable and transient indulgences of a golden youth, but were all the governance he was going to offer. The first job of any ruler of Transylvania, even if he had been properly elected and was personally popular, was to secure his possessions and crush any dissent among the different
nationes
and the many factions. Gábor preferred hedonism to strategy from the start,
behaving like a gleeful child who had been handed a kingdom as a playground. Not satisfied with the courtesans he was offered, Báthory awarded himself
droit de seigneur
over the wives of his counsellors, and before long everyone believed the rumours that he had also pursued an incestuous relationship with his younger sister Anna, who was later tried for witchcraft and murder. It was not only women he was drawn to, if the romances can be believed. In this extract from a set text for Hungarian high-school children, Gábor is toying with his favourites in the midst of the campaign in Wallachia: ‘Come here, my darling,' and he seated the young Hajduk, Pal Szilassy, by his own side, put the girl [a young Wallachian noblewoman] on his lap, and began to teach the boy how to kiss the girl. He embraced them both, and now he kissed and fondled the boy, then the girl. . .'
²⁶
Sitting in retrospective judgement on Gábor, Anna and their aunt Elisabeth, historians declared ringingly that ‘The last scions of this once great family were being consumed in the flames of their unbridled passions.'
²⁷

While Anna and Elisabeth were judged and condemned by their contemporaries, Gábor was forgiven, not least because he was a man, but even a ruler of an absolutist state was taking a risk when he breached feudal codes of honour, and those whose family pride he had trampled upon hated him. When Gábor forced his lustful attentions on the wife of a senior Catholic aristocrat, Balthazar Kornis, this provided a good excuse for the Chancellor Kendy, who had suffered no personal slight himself (and who was given one of the most profitable manors of Transylvania) to take advantage of the popular discontent for his own purposes. He approached those nobles opposed to Gábor, who then met to orchestrate a conspiracy to murder the Prince. Assassins were sent to kill him, but the plotters were betrayed, Kornis was arrested and his brother George was killed; the rest of the conspirators fled. In his first rage Gábor had János Kolosváry, a high judge, whom Kornis had named as a fellow-conspirator hanged without trial. He also confiscated the estates of the Kornises, the Kendys and other Catholic nobles.

After the failure of the Kendy plot, the Jesuits who were spearheading the Counter-Reformation fled the country immediately. The Diet then invoked an old law banning their activities, and although nobles were allowed to keep a Catholic priest on their properties, they were forbidden to try to convert their serfs.

The country was restive, and the Prince and his entourage were resentful after the attempt on his life. His first meeting with the
new Hungarian Palatine George Thurzó on the Kiralydaróc field between the two territories was not a success. The purpose of the negotiations should have been the strengthening of ties between the two Hungarian states, but Thurzó, who Gábor knew had given the would-be assassins his backing, delivered his far-reaching demands bluntly: he wanted Transylvania to have a representative in the Royal Hungarian Diet, which would have meant acknowledging the sovereignty of the Hungarian crown, and he and the Habsburg monarch wanted the renewal of an alliance with the subordinate partner, Transylvania, supporting the Empire in its anti-Turkish policy. The Prince considered this a provocation, and abruptly departed. He took out his rage on Balthazar Kornis by peremptorily executing him.

Twice during the summer of 1610, Gábor met with Thurzó again. On both occasions Thurzó's arrogant intransigence, which matched the hot-tempered pride of the Prince, led them into a personal confrontation which scuppered the talks. On 15 August it was a question of precedence. George Thurzó refused to address Gábor as prince
(fejedelem)
and insisted that in the eyes of Royal Hungary he was a mere provincial governor
(vajda),
a rank lower than that of count palatine. Gábor left immediately.

Letters discovered by this author in Vienna show that Gábor was trying brazenly to recruit troops from within Hungary in late 1610 – at the very moment that Thurzó decided to arrest his aunt.
²⁸
Later, after Thurzó had succeeded in establishing an understanding with Báthory, the Palatine wrote to Elisabeth Czobor, his wife. ‘In Vienna they should give me their thanks, for if I had not succeeded in making peace, the entire country as far as the Fatras would have fallen and been lost to his Majesty. His Majesty should offer thanks to the Almighty for this peace!'
²⁹
This revealing private note is the only admission of how grave the situation was. It proves beyond doubt that there was a real danger that a combination of anti-Habsburg and pro-Báthory feeling in Hungary and a military uprising or invasion inspired in the east by Gábor himself could have ensured that not only the disputed territories of the Partium and the volatile Seven Counties, but the entire eastern third of Hungary (separated by the Fatra mountain chain) would go over to Gábor and his Hajdúks. This in itself was sufficient reason for Thurzó to incapacitate Elisabeth, to prevent her rallying supporters or subsidising mercenaries and to destroy the reputation of her family in the eyes of the undecided nobles.