Horváth M. Ferenc (szerk.): Vác The heart of the Danube Bend. A historical guide for residents and globetrotters (Vác, 2009)
Tartalom
98 VÁC IN THE OTTOMAN ERA course of the 18 years under examination, rents for market stalls were always entered in the books on a particular day of the week. In the 1540s the market day was generally Sunday. In the following decade Monday and in the next one weekly market were held on Tuesdays. (It was common practice that the market day shifted to the day before or after.) At the beginning of the Ottoman occupation trade was moderate: in 1546 an average of 28 stall keepers paid market-dues. However, their number kept growing slowly but steadily: in 1558-59 there were already 35, and in 1563 as many as 41. Their number was usually smaller in winter days and larger in the autumn. We know little of their products because the stall keepers were not charged for the goods grown in their gardens or produced in their workshops and carried to market in baskets or on their “heads", they paid only the market-dues. The treasury did not make a profit on their goods, so they were not entered into the books. The entries on the market days mention fish, wine, salt and also coarse baize, earthenware and fruit transported from outside the town because duty was imposed on these goods: besides the market-dues, cart tolls were often recorded, which indicates that the farmers from the nearby villages also visited the market place. During the period described above there were several days with particularly high income from market-dues, which indicates significant events: the journal fragment of 1558-59 calls these days "the fairs of Vác”. The first one was on 17 October following Gál's Day, the second one on 19 December, the last Sunday of Advent, the third one in the spring of the following year, on 21 March on Benedict's Day. The October and December fairs were held on the same or almost the same days in subsequent years as well. In 1547 and 1564 a day around Epiphany, 5 and 8 January respectively, seem to have had a fair with less trade but still much busier than weekly markets; however, there is no trace of a fair around that day in 1564. That year another day in early spring, 26 February, the day after Matthew's Day attracted a great many, about 700 merchants. The spring and early summer months are always missing from the journal fragments; we do not know whether any fairs were held then. Even if there were not, the five national fairs per year seem to be an unbelievably high number. Perhaps the Ottoman leaders of Vác ordered the fair to be held at the end of the winter on different days. In the fairs called "throngs" in the medieval Hungarian language there were lots of stall keepers and merchants hustling: in 1546-47 in each case 462 on average. More precisely, in 1558-59 1522, in 1563-64 624 traders. The October fairs were the busiest: 820 people were selling their goods in 1546, 3233 in 1558,1048 in 1563, while frosty Epiphany fairs were the least visited: 266 in 1547 and 206 in 1564. Even these latter figures indicate rich and ample fairs: 1048 stall keepers mean that they were very rich; while 3233 stall keepers mean that sometimes there were more strangers jostling at the fair in Vác than the population of the town. It is likely that quite a few animals that were driven through the town were also sold here. At least this is what the journal entries containing the dues levied on slaughters suggest. Gáspár, the Scribe, who had his goods cleared on the 21st December 1563 had arrived in the town with an impressive amount of goods worth 20 gold coins. The figures between 1546 and 1563 show definite development of the economy and trade. Unfortunately no accounts of the following years have survived, so we cannot follow up the process. The transit trade must have become busier, because during the rest of the century the export of livestock and animal skin from the Great Hungarian Plain westwards was growing dynamically and a significant proportion of this was transported through Vác. We can assume that the economy of the town itself kept developing too because from the 1560s onwards there were no more wars in this area. In 1568 Istanbul and Vienna made peace, which lasted for a quarter of a century. Although the skirmishes, forays and military raids never ceased between the rivalling parties, the big devastating campaigns were over. This relatively calm period offered the opportunity to the settlements and their population to recoup themselves and start living productive lives again.
