Szolnok Castle
Encyclopedia
Szolnok Castle was an important military fort for many centuries due to its prime location at the confluence of the Tisza
and Zagyva
rivers, in the middle of the Great Hungarian Plain
. The area was the crossroads of several trade routes, including salt and lumber, as well as being a key route for armies passing between Buda
and Translyvania. Against the advancing Ottoman forces in the 16th century, Szolnok
and Eger
were the only two forts protecting the heart of Hungary and Upper Hungary.
Beginning in the time of the Árpád dynasty
(9th to 13th centuries) there was an earthwork
fort at Szolnok
. After the 1526 Battle of Mohács
this was expanded to a Pfostenschlitzmauer
, and later a stone fortress in the face of Szolnok's key position against the Ottomans. In the 17th century the fort continued to be expanded and improved, but after the Rákóczi Uprising the fort fell into disuse. It was dismantled and the stones were used in several buildings in Szolnok. Today only traces of the fort remain.
-Tisza
-Mureş
area, only two forces of any significance stood between them and the rest of Hungary: Szolnok, and Eger to the north. Beginning in June 1552, Hungarian, Transylvanian, and Viennese agents all began reporting that the Ottoman army was on the move out of Temesvár towards Szolnok and Eger. The task of capturing the two was given to Ali Pasha of Buda. After the fall of other minor fortifications on the Puszta
, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent
ordered Pashas Ahmed, Ali, and Mohamed to lead their armies against the castles.
It was in light of this Turkish danger that in 1550-51 Ferdinand I
ordered the Szolnok earthworks to be improved with a new town wall (partially planned by István Dobó
), the castle to be fortified, and Lőrinc Nyáry put in command. General Nicolaus Salm planned the works and supervised the workforce, which was made up mostly of local peasants and some soldiers under orders. Although they were using some stone, for the most part the walls were built up as clay packed between upright beams. In the etchings a typical four-sided fort with a spacious inner courtyard can be seen, protected by rounded cannon towers at each corner and a wide surrounding moat. The final completion of the bastions was possible only after the Turks left, many years later.
Further works began in summer of 1552 and progressed rapidly. In order to surround the castle, a new branch of the Zagyva
river was dug. This new branch is the one that remains today, at the point where the Zagyva flows into the Tisza
river. The original course of the Zagyva has today been filled in, but a small part of it remains as the lake in front of the Szolnok MÁV Hospital.
On September 2, 1552, Pasha Ahmed Ali besieged the castle with his army of 40,000. Although it was the German mercenaries who first entertained thoughts of escape, it was the Hungarian boatmen who deserted first. On the night of September 3rd the Hungarian and Spanish horsemen swam across the Tisza, then the boatmen returned for the foot soldiers. On the night of September 4th the mercenaries deserted, leaving the castle to its fate. After they departed the front gate was left open until morning, leading to the easy overpowering and capture of Lőrinc Nyáry and the fifty remaining brave men.
István Mekcsey, one of the defenders of the Siege of Eger
, wrote the following to his sister four days before the Turkish advance forces reached Eger: "I can't write more... but to say that every day now we feel we are awaiting a great punishment since the traitors gave up Szolnok."
Ahmed and Mohamed left a garrison of 2000 soldiers in Szolnok while they marched against Eger. The castle remained in Turkish hands until 1685.
of Szolnok, and in the following years built a mosque, baths, and a minaret; during the course of later battles these were destroyed, mostly deliberately. Of the minaret the base remained, and this was made into a stylized fountain which remains today. In 1562 they constructed the first permanent bridge spanning the Tisza
. The remains of the so-called Szolnok Turkish Bridge (Hungarian
: szolnoki török kori híd) again came to light in August 2003 after a summer of drought. The only Turkish codex
made in Hungary was copied in Szolnok; it describes the campaigns of Suleiman in Hungary. Pottery and tools from the Turkish era can be seen today in Szolnok's Damjanich János Museum.
and Mercz; during the liberation both the city and the castle were significantly damaged. Due to the castle's strategic importance it was rebuilt by commander Antonio Caraffa. At this time the remaining wooden parts of the castle were finished with stone, and other changes were made to the facade. In a survey sketch from the Vienna War Archives (Kriegsarchiv des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs), it can be seen that by 1778 the once-rounded towers had been replaced with polygonal towers.
It is also worth noting that by this time the Szolnok Turkish Bridge was destroyed, so a new bridge was made across the Tisza, but connecting the two banks at the town itself, which meant the other side of the Zagyva, which in essence was the model for construction of all later bridges. At this time the walls around the city, the wooden-spined towers and the most of the city wall was destroyed, and the city's former moat filled in. The former moat is remembered today in the "Tófenék utca" ("Bottom-of-the-Lake Street") street name, which can be found in the center of Szolnok, where the northwest part of the moat used to lie.
In 1697 Imre Thököly
burned down the castle. The events of the Rákóczi Uprising in 1703, and 1706 reached Szolnok and the city was again razed to the ground. In 1706 Ferenc Deák, one of Rákóczi's leaders, burned the castle so that Imperial forces couldn't use it, so Imperial General Rabutin had the stones all taken away. In 1710 forces loyal to Rákóczi took over the castle, but on October 10 they abandoned it to the advancing army of Imperial General Jacob Joseph Cusani. After the Uprising, the castle finally fell to pieces and the stones were carted away.
The planned demolition of the castle took place between 1799 and 1811.
Tisza
The Tisza or Tisa is one of the main rivers of Central Europe. It rises in Ukraine, and is formed near Rakhiv by the junction of headwaters White Tisa, whose source is in the Chornohora mountains and Black Tisa, which springs in the Gorgany range...
and Zagyva
Zagyva
The Zagyva is a river in Hungary. Its length is 160 km, and drains an area of about 5,677 km². The source is near Salgótarján in Nógrád county. It flows through the towns of Bátonyterenye, Pásztó, Hatvan and Jászberény and flows into the Tisza River at Szolnok. Average discharge at Szolnok is 9 m³/s....
rivers, in the middle of the Great Hungarian Plain
Great Hungarian Plain
The Great Hungarian Plain is a plain occupying the southern and eastern part of Hungary, some parts of the Eastern Slovak Lowland, southwestern Ukraine, the Transcarpathian Lowland , western Romania , northern Serbia , and eastern Croatia...
. The area was the crossroads of several trade routes, including salt and lumber, as well as being a key route for armies passing between Buda
Buda
For detailed information see: History of Buda CastleBuda is the western part of the Hungarian capital Budapest on the west bank of the Danube. The name Buda takes its name from the name of Bleda the Hun ruler, whose name is also Buda in Hungarian.Buda comprises about one-third of Budapest's...
and Translyvania. Against the advancing Ottoman forces in the 16th century, Szolnok
Szolnok
Szolnok is the county seat of Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county in central Hungary. Its location on the banks of the Tisza river, at the heart of the Great Hungarian Plain, has made it an important cultural and economic crossroads for centuries....
and Eger
Eger
Eger is the second largest city in Northern Hungary, the county seat of Heves, east of the Mátra Mountains. Eger is best known for its castle, thermal baths, historic buildings , and red and white wines.- Name :...
were the only two forts protecting the heart of Hungary and Upper Hungary.
Beginning in the time of the Árpád dynasty
Árpád dynasty
The Árpáds or Arpads was the ruling dynasty of the federation of the Hungarian tribes and of the Kingdom of Hungary . The dynasty was named after Grand Prince Árpád who was the head of the tribal federation when the Magyars occupied the Carpathian Basin, circa 895...
(9th to 13th centuries) there was an earthwork
Earthworks (engineering)
Earthworks are engineering works created through the moving or processing of quantities of soil or unformed rock.- Civil engineering use :Typical earthworks include roads, railway beds, causeways, dams, levees, canals, and berms...
fort at Szolnok
Szolnok
Szolnok is the county seat of Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county in central Hungary. Its location on the banks of the Tisza river, at the heart of the Great Hungarian Plain, has made it an important cultural and economic crossroads for centuries....
. After the 1526 Battle of Mohács
Battle of Mohács
The Battle of Mohács was fought on August 29, 1526 near Mohács, Hungary. In the battle, forces of the Kingdom of Hungary led by King Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia were defeated by forces of the Ottoman Empire led by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent....
this was expanded to a Pfostenschlitzmauer
Pfostenschlitzmauer
Pfostenschlitzmauer is a method of constructing defensive walls protecting Iron Age hillforts and oppida in Central Europe, including Bavaria and the Czech Republic. It is characterized by vertical wooden posts set into the front stone facing. The rampart is constructed from a timber lattice...
, and later a stone fortress in the face of Szolnok's key position against the Ottomans. In the 17th century the fort continued to be expanded and improved, but after the Rákóczi Uprising the fort fell into disuse. It was dismantled and the stones were used in several buildings in Szolnok. Today only traces of the fort remain.
Construction of the castle
The decision to upgrade the palisade fort to one of stone was based on Szolnok's geographical importance, and its place in the border castle system. After the Ottoman armies captured Temesvár and occupied the DanubeDanube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
-Tisza
Tisza
The Tisza or Tisa is one of the main rivers of Central Europe. It rises in Ukraine, and is formed near Rakhiv by the junction of headwaters White Tisa, whose source is in the Chornohora mountains and Black Tisa, which springs in the Gorgany range...
-Mureş
Mures
The name Mureș may refer to:*Mureș County in Romania*Mureș River in Romania and Hungary *Mures , a puzzle gameAlso, the following localities contain the name Mureș and lie on the banks of the river above....
area, only two forces of any significance stood between them and the rest of Hungary: Szolnok, and Eger to the north. Beginning in June 1552, Hungarian, Transylvanian, and Viennese agents all began reporting that the Ottoman army was on the move out of Temesvár towards Szolnok and Eger. The task of capturing the two was given to Ali Pasha of Buda. After the fall of other minor fortifications on the Puszta
Puszta
Puszta is a steppe biome on the Great Hungarian Plain around the River Tisza in the eastern part of Hungary as well as on the western part of Hungary and in the Austrian Burgenland. The Hungarian puszta is an enclave of the Eurasian Steppe....
, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent
Suleiman the Magnificent
Suleiman I was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1520 to his death in 1566. He is known in the West as Suleiman the Magnificent and in the East, as "The Lawgiver" , for his complete reconstruction of the Ottoman legal system...
ordered Pashas Ahmed, Ali, and Mohamed to lead their armies against the castles.
It was in light of this Turkish danger that in 1550-51 Ferdinand I
Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor
Ferdinand I was Holy Roman Emperor from 1558 and king of Bohemia and Hungary from 1526 until his death. Before his accession, he ruled the Austrian hereditary lands of the Habsburgs in the name of his elder brother, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.The key events during his reign were the contest...
ordered the Szolnok earthworks to be improved with a new town wall (partially planned by István Dobó
István Dobó
Baron István Dobó de Ruszka Baron István Dobó de Ruszka Baron István Dobó de Ruszka (c. 1502 - Szerednye (today, Середнє (Szerednye / Serednie, Ukraine), mid-June 1572). Hungarian soldier, best known as the successful defender of Eger against the Ottomans in 1552. Dobó was a member of the...
), the castle to be fortified, and Lőrinc Nyáry put in command. General Nicolaus Salm planned the works and supervised the workforce, which was made up mostly of local peasants and some soldiers under orders. Although they were using some stone, for the most part the walls were built up as clay packed between upright beams. In the etchings a typical four-sided fort with a spacious inner courtyard can be seen, protected by rounded cannon towers at each corner and a wide surrounding moat. The final completion of the bastions was possible only after the Turks left, many years later.
Further works began in summer of 1552 and progressed rapidly. In order to surround the castle, a new branch of the Zagyva
Zagyva
The Zagyva is a river in Hungary. Its length is 160 km, and drains an area of about 5,677 km². The source is near Salgótarján in Nógrád county. It flows through the towns of Bátonyterenye, Pásztó, Hatvan and Jászberény and flows into the Tisza River at Szolnok. Average discharge at Szolnok is 9 m³/s....
river was dug. This new branch is the one that remains today, at the point where the Zagyva flows into the Tisza
Tisza
The Tisza or Tisa is one of the main rivers of Central Europe. It rises in Ukraine, and is formed near Rakhiv by the junction of headwaters White Tisa, whose source is in the Chornohora mountains and Black Tisa, which springs in the Gorgany range...
river. The original course of the Zagyva has today been filled in, but a small part of it remains as the lake in front of the Szolnok MÁV Hospital.
Ottoman siege of 1552
Under the command of Lőrinc Nyáry the fort contained 1400 soldiers, mostly Spanish, German, Czech, with a small number of Hungarians. The castle was armed with 24 cannons, 3000 muskets, 800 weights of gunpowder, and was well-stocked with food and supplies.On September 2, 1552, Pasha Ahmed Ali besieged the castle with his army of 40,000. Although it was the German mercenaries who first entertained thoughts of escape, it was the Hungarian boatmen who deserted first. On the night of September 3rd the Hungarian and Spanish horsemen swam across the Tisza, then the boatmen returned for the foot soldiers. On the night of September 4th the mercenaries deserted, leaving the castle to its fate. After they departed the front gate was left open until morning, leading to the easy overpowering and capture of Lőrinc Nyáry and the fifty remaining brave men.
István Mekcsey, one of the defenders of the Siege of Eger
Siege of Eger
The Siege of Eger occurred during the 16th century Ottoman Wars in Europe. It was a major Hungarian victory after a series of crushing defeats at the hands of Ottoman forces and checked the Ottoman expansion into both Central Europe and Eastern Europe....
, wrote the following to his sister four days before the Turkish advance forces reached Eger: "I can't write more... but to say that every day now we feel we are awaiting a great punishment since the traitors gave up Szolnok."
Ahmed and Mohamed left a garrison of 2000 soldiers in Szolnok while they marched against Eger. The castle remained in Turkish hands until 1685.
Ottoman age
The Ottoman occupation of Szolnok lasted from 1552 to 1685. In 1553 they established the sanjakSanjak
Sanjaks were administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire. Sanjak, and the variant spellings sandjak, sanjaq, and sinjaq, are English transliterations of the Turkish word sancak, meaning district, banner, or flag...
of Szolnok, and in the following years built a mosque, baths, and a minaret; during the course of later battles these were destroyed, mostly deliberately. Of the minaret the base remained, and this was made into a stylized fountain which remains today. In 1562 they constructed the first permanent bridge spanning the Tisza
Tisza
The Tisza or Tisa is one of the main rivers of Central Europe. It rises in Ukraine, and is formed near Rakhiv by the junction of headwaters White Tisa, whose source is in the Chornohora mountains and Black Tisa, which springs in the Gorgany range...
. The remains of the so-called Szolnok Turkish Bridge (Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
: szolnoki török kori híd) again came to light in August 2003 after a summer of drought. The only Turkish codex
Codex
A codex is a book in the format used for modern books, with multiple quires or gatherings typically bound together and given a cover.Developed by the Romans from wooden writing tablets, its gradual replacement...
made in Hungary was copied in Szolnok; it describes the campaigns of Suleiman in Hungary. Pottery and tools from the Turkish era can be seen today in Szolnok's Damjanich János Museum.
After the Ottoman occupation
In 1685 Szolnok was liberated from the Ottomans by the Habsburg armies under the control of Generals Sigbert HeisterSigbert Heister
Sigbert Graf Heister was an Imperial Field marshal.His father was Gottfried Heister , Vicepresident of the Hofkriegsrat....
and Mercz; during the liberation both the city and the castle were significantly damaged. Due to the castle's strategic importance it was rebuilt by commander Antonio Caraffa. At this time the remaining wooden parts of the castle were finished with stone, and other changes were made to the facade. In a survey sketch from the Vienna War Archives (Kriegsarchiv des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs), it can be seen that by 1778 the once-rounded towers had been replaced with polygonal towers.
It is also worth noting that by this time the Szolnok Turkish Bridge was destroyed, so a new bridge was made across the Tisza, but connecting the two banks at the town itself, which meant the other side of the Zagyva, which in essence was the model for construction of all later bridges. At this time the walls around the city, the wooden-spined towers and the most of the city wall was destroyed, and the city's former moat filled in. The former moat is remembered today in the "Tófenék utca" ("Bottom-of-the-Lake Street") street name, which can be found in the center of Szolnok, where the northwest part of the moat used to lie.
In 1697 Imre Thököly
Imre Thököly
Count Imre Thököly de Késmárk was a Hungarian statesman, leader of an anti-Habsburg uprising, Prince of Transylvania, and vassal king of Upper Hungary.- Early life :Imre Thököly was born at Késmárk, Royal Hungary Count Imre Thököly de Késmárk (Thököly/Tököly/Tökölli Imre in Hungarian, Mirko...
burned down the castle. The events of the Rákóczi Uprising in 1703, and 1706 reached Szolnok and the city was again razed to the ground. In 1706 Ferenc Deák, one of Rákóczi's leaders, burned the castle so that Imperial forces couldn't use it, so Imperial General Rabutin had the stones all taken away. In 1710 forces loyal to Rákóczi took over the castle, but on October 10 they abandoned it to the advancing army of Imperial General Jacob Joseph Cusani. After the Uprising, the castle finally fell to pieces and the stones were carted away.
The planned demolition of the castle took place between 1799 and 1811.
Related pages
- SzolnokSzolnokSzolnok is the county seat of Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county in central Hungary. Its location on the banks of the Tisza river, at the heart of the Great Hungarian Plain, has made it an important cultural and economic crossroads for centuries....
- Siege of EgerSiege of EgerThe Siege of Eger occurred during the 16th century Ottoman Wars in Europe. It was a major Hungarian victory after a series of crushing defeats at the hands of Ottoman forces and checked the Ottoman expansion into both Central Europe and Eastern Europe....
- Ottoman wars in EuropeOttoman wars in EuropeThe wars of the Ottoman Empire in Europe are also sometimes referred to as the Ottoman Wars or as Turkish Wars, particularly in older, European texts.- Rise :...
- Ottoman–Habsburg wars