Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

Chapter 525 Elizabeth Bathory

"It feels like you have suddenly had many opportunities to face vampires in your life recently." After listening to Liang En's words, Joan showed a thoughtful expression. "I always find things and places related to vampires inexplicably."

"This is mainly because there have been more activities in Eastern Europe recently." As soon as Jeanne finished speaking, Liang En explained. "The legend of vampires comes from Eastern Europe, so there will be more related ruins here."

The earliest vampire legends come from the 14th century. At that time, there was a large-scale plague in Europe. In order to avoid being infected, people often buried the patients in a hurry without carefully identifying whether they were really dead.

For some reason, when people open the tomb, they will find that the body has changed its position and is stained with blood. This is just because the person who was buried was not dead at the time and struggled after waking up in the coffin.

At that time, regions such as East Prussia, Silesia, and Bohemia due to poverty and lack of education were rumored to be vampires, which triggered vampire superstition that lasted for hundreds of years.

But blood-sucking in the modern sense actually originated in the 18th century. Before that, there was no modern word vampire. The word first appeared in English in 1732, which is when the existence of vampires became generally accepted.

This is mainly related to the popularization of education and the accelerated flow of information. The plague was prevalent again in 1710, and East Prussia suffered greatly. In order to eliminate the people's fear, the authorities, or in other words, the officials and the people unanimously believed that the culprit of the plague was vampires.

The authorities used many horrific methods, such as opening all the graves in a cemetery to see which bodies had not decomposed or whether their nails, hair, etc. continued to grow after death.

At the same time, transportation in Europe at that time was much more convenient than it was hundreds of years ago, so these legends from East Prussia were not limited to the local area like hundreds of years ago, but spread throughout Europe.

Of course, some scientists now believe that some of the people historically thought to be vampires were actually porphyria patients. This is a metabolic disease caused by genetic defects.

Patients with this disease are afraid of light, allergic to garlic, and have red eyes. Supplementing hemoglobin can help alleviate the condition.

A few extreme patients believed that drinking blood could replenish hemoglobin, which led to vampire legends that have been passed down to this day and have become an indispensable part of today's fantasy literature.

As for Elizabeth Bathory, she is an important part of the vampire legend. According to legend, she killed young girls and bathed in the blood of these victims to maintain her youth.

"Did you say that the old woman just now was the prototype of the vampire countess? But I don't think so." Joan of Arc shook her head subconsciously and said. "Can you tell the story in full?"

The Joan of Arc in this world has indeed read a lot of books, but because the contents of the Vampire Countess are generally regarded as legends rather than historical facts, she really doesn't know the situation in this regard.

"Tell this story completely?" Liang En tapped the cover of the book in his hand, "Let me think about where to start - by the way, let's start from the beginning of the story."

This Elizabeth Bathory is a member of the famous Bathory family. Starting from the family's founder, Stefan III, this family has been dominant in Hungary for nearly two hundred years.

By Elizabeth's generation, the Bathory family already had huge wealth and a high social status.

From a very early age, she studied classical classics and mathematics, and knew four languages: Latin, German, Hungarian and Greek.

Unlike Joan who became masculine only after joining the army, as a child she asked others to treat her like a boy. She often wears boys' clothes, learns fencing and equestrian skills, and plays boys' games.

It was common for aristocrats of that era to be engaged as a child and then live in their future husband's home. In 1571, the 11-year-old Elizabeth was engaged to the 16-year-old Ferenc II Nadasti. This was a well-matched marriage. Four years later, the two officially got married.

After the marriage, Ferenc gave Elisabeth the gift he received from his mother - the Chahtisburg Castle located in the Lesser Carpathian Mountains and seventeen surrounding villages as a wedding gift. Near Eagle Beak Rock.

Although she was one of the largest landowners in Europe, she was still very careful about her finances. In a letter to her subordinates, she even personally directed the purchase of three onion rings.

In terms of public welfare, she invested a lot of money to revitalize domestic education, build hospitals and Protestant schools, sponsor foreign students, and protect the rights and interests of farmers and churches. People spoke highly of her, and the king even ordered his daughter to learn from her.

But things took a turn for the worse later, and Elizabeth Bathory's husband died in 1604 during a war with the Ottomans outside Buda in 1603. This war also caused the Fabsburg family to lose hope of recapturing Buda and Pest.

Yes, Budapest, the capital of Hungary today, was two cities at that time, located far apart on both sides of the Danube River. They were first called Pest-Buda. It was not until 1873 that they were combined into one city and called Budapest.

After becoming a widow, fate did not let Elizabeth Bathory go. In March 1610, Prime Minister George Turso ordered an investigation into Elizabeth Bathory's case on the grounds that she was suspected of torturing and murdering servants.

In the same month, Elizabeth's nephew Gabriel Bathory, Prince of Transylvania, was assassinated, but failed, and it is now believed that the assassination was related to Turso.

To make matters worse, the Prime Minister's actions were clearly approved by tacit approval, and the relationship between Matthias, the King of Hungary and the Holy Roman Emperor at the time, and Gabriel was also very tense.

In January 1611, the Prime Minister held two trials of Elizabeth Bathory, accusing the other party of murder, but strangely the witnesses and the servants accused of accomplices each gave different and widely separated numbers of victims. .

Four so-called felons were executed with lightning speed after being tortured to extract confessions. But Elizabeth was placed under house arrest in her castle without a guilty verdict.

Although King Matthias at the time repeatedly requested Turso to be tried, no trial was given until Elizabeth's death.

On November 25, 1614, she was buried in the church of Chahtisburg. A year before her death, Gabriel Bathory was killed by the next Prince of Transylvania, Gabriel Bertram, and the glory of the Bathory family came to an end.

As Liang En finished his last words, the surrounding area became quiet. It was not until five or six minutes later that Jeanne suddenly raised her head and looked at Liang En and said.

"No, there is something wrong with this situation. At least in my opinion, this Elizabeth Bartow should be involved in a political struggle. As for the bad reputation, it should be just framed."

As a former Marshal of France, Joan of Arc understood certain struggles, so after listening to Liang En tell the whole story, she quickly realized that something was wrong.