Monster of cruelty born in the latter part of the sixteenth century; she was the niece of Stephen Báthory, king of Poland, and the wife of Count Nádasdy of Hungary. She employed agents to kidnap young girls and women, whom she murdered in a diabolical manner, for the purpose of securing a continuous supply of their blood in which she might bathe, believing this was a sure method of securing perpetual beauty. Official investigation in 1610 convicted her of having put to death in this manner 650 victims. Her agents were beheaded or burned alive, but she escaped with confinement to her fortress of Csej, where she died in 1614.
