Horváth M. Ferenc (szerk.): Vác The heart of the Danube Bend. A historical guide for residents and globetrotters (Vác, 2009)

Tartalom

VÁC IN THE OTTOMAN ERA

105

ingredients of any decent Muslim centres: the roofed bazaar, primary and high school, and the most important of all social institutes, the alms-kitchen for the poor. He did not enthuse over the houses of the town either: due to the destructions of the war there were hardly any two-storey stone houses left.

However, the final ordeal was still to come. In 1683 the army of the Ottoman Empire marched on the Danube bank to war against Vienna. Its defeat at the gates of the imperial capital city was followed by the campaign of the European Allied Powers aiming at liberating Hungary, which set the country ablaze again for one and a half decades and destroyed everything that had been left after the Ottoman occupation. Vác survived the brunt of the fights in three years, a relatively short time in the circumstances. The allied Christian forces tried to recapture Buda first in 1684. They fought a victorious battle against

the pasha of Buda's army and liberated Vác. However, Christian rule did not last long. After the Christian army abandoned the siege of Buda, the pasha and the beg of Nógrád took Vác back. They could not enjoy it for a long time either: the following year the pasha of Buda, who was retreating from Esztergom and being chased by the imperial armies, evacuated and burnt down the castle and the town once again. In June 1686 the Christian forces marching towards Buda occupied the empty heap of ruins once and for all. On 2 September Buda was liberated and Vác was freed from Ottoman rule for good.

Jacob Tollius, a scholar and traveller from the Low Countries, visited Buda and the surrounding area in 1687. He wrote the following about Vác in his diary, "I sighed at the sight of the former famous castle. Only a handful of Serbian families live in huts there, or rather, hide there."

The Liberation of Buda in 1686