Szigetvár (German: Großsiget, Inselburg, Croatian: Siget, Turkish: Zigetvar) is a town in Baranya County, the center of the Szigetvár district.
The settlement of South Transdanubia is located in
the western part of Baranya county, on the southern edge of South
Zselic, which belongs to the Tolna – Baranya hills, bordering the
Drava plain. The city is bisected by the Almás stream, which often
flooded before its regulation and turned the area into a swampy
floodplain.
The city can be approached by road from Barcs and
the capital on the main road 6, from the direction of
Balatonszemes-Kaposvár on the main road 67; It is connected to
Kadarkút by road 6607. It is located 31 km from Barcs and the
Croatian state border, 35 km from Pécs and 40 km from Kaposvár. It
is affected by the Gyékényes – Pécs railway line, to which the
Kaposvár – Szigetvár railway line joined the Szigetvár railway
station until its closure in 1977.
Szigetvár in
the Middle Ages
The settlement and its surroundings have been
inhabited since prehistoric times, as evidenced by the Neolithic and
Bronze Age archeological finds (stone axes, mesh weights, fibulas)
found here. After Celtic, Roman and then Avar rule, the area fell
into the hands of the conquering Hungarians.
As a landlord's
estate, Zygeth first appears in the springs in 1391 in the form, its
first protected building was built on an island-like strip of land
protruding from the swampy floodplain of the Almás stream. The very
first archaeologically verifiable structure of the castle, which
plays the role of the manorial center, the so-called the
construction of the round tower, the inner core of the later
16th-century castle in the first half of the 15th century, can be
traced back to the name of the possessive island Antimus Osvát
(Osvald). The early fortress, consisting of a three-storey
residential tower and its later extensions, as a castrum in 1449,
the previously fortified settlement on the other island of the Almás
brook, surrounded by a rampart, first appears in writing in 1463.
The text of a marble plaque made in 1939 at the southern gate
crossing also commemorates the castle's founding landlord, Osvald.
The castle and the town became the property of the Turkish
family of Enying in 1473. The most famous member of this family,
Bálint Török, completed the construction of the castle and the
settlement into a real fortress in the 1530s. In doing so, it
expanded the inner castle with a large outer part of the castle
fortified with Italian bastions at the corners, surrounded by a
system of ditches filled with the water of the Almás stream, through
which drawbridges provided a connection between the outer and inner
castle and the city. Bálint Török's fortified island estate was
significant not only as a military base, but also as an intellectual
base in the endlands: Sebestyén Tinódi Lantos, the Hungarian creator
of the historical singing genre, lived and composed here until 1542,
but the house of the first Hungarian poet Pál Istvánffy poet, and
his son, Miklós Istvánffy, was a humanist historian.
The age
of castle wars and conquest
After the castle lord was captured by
the Turks, with the fall of Buda, then Pécs and Siklós, the
fortress, which gained special strategic importance, became the
property of Ferdinand I of Habsburg in 1543 as a royal estate. The
Ottoman armies advancing in Transdanubia managed to occupy all the
surrounding border forts in the years 1540-1550, so Sziget was
completely left alone. After the Turkish attack repulsed by László
Kerecsényi in 1554, the first, really serious siege of the fortress
took place in the summer of 1556. The then captain in charge of the
defense, Márk Horváth Stancsics, despite the extraordinary efforts,
managed to keep the castle against the multiple overpowering army
led by Pasha Ali from Buda. The castle, damaged during the siege,
was rebuilt under the leadership of the captain and with the
involvement of the Italian military engineer Pietro Ferrabosco,
using the most modern military techniques, as a result of which by
the end of the 1550s it became Hungary's most modern and strongest
border castle. Protected by a rampart, corner bastions and moats,
occupied by the Turks and severely damaged during the siege, the
construction of the new town began after 1556.
After the death of Márk Horváth, in 1561 Miklós Zrínyi became the
castle captain. He was tasked with maintaining the last important
southern border fortress, still in imperial hands, endangering the
safety of the military and trade route between Buda and
Nándorfehérvár. After a few years of silence, the battle of
Szigetvár took place in the late summer of 1566, which finally led
to the abandonment of Southern Transdanubia, surpassing all its
significance and leaving a really deep trace in Hungarian historical
memory, ending in defeat despite the heroic perseverance of the
defenders. Sultan Suleiman I besieged the castle of Szigetvár with
an army of fifty thousand regular forces, which Zrínyi defended with
about 2,500 soldiers, resisting Turkish superiority for 34 days. On
September 7, 1566, when the inner castle was already on fire, Zrínyi
and his 300 combatants still tried to erupt (“Zrínyi’s outburst”),
but all of them died a heroic death at the castle gate. During the
siege, the medieval round tower was also destroyed. Immediately
after the occupation of the castle, the Turks began to rebuild the
fortress and the settlement. The castle itself was fortified with
brick and stone walls, as a result of which, apart from the later
minor alterations and expansions after the liberation, the fortress
in its present form was formed. A number of public buildings have
been erected in the city, several of which are highly regarded
Ottoman Turkish architectural works, including the mosque of Sultan
Suleiman and Pasha Ali, as well as the so-called Turkish house, to a
greater or lesser extent, has survived to this day. Szigetvár played
a prominent military-administrative role during the occupation. It
was first the center of the Sandzak, which was subordinated to the
Buda and then the Kanizsa vilajet, but for a short time, between
1594 and 1596, it itself became the seat of Beglerbég (Szigetvár
vilajet).
As a result of the campaigns following the
liberation of Buda in 1686, the southern part of Transdanubia was
almost completely regained by the emperors, only - similarly to the
period before the fall of the castle in 1566 - Sziget still held
itself, this time in the hands of the Turks, in the enemy's ring.
The isolation or starvation of the garrison forced the Turks to hand
over the castle and town without fighting in February 1689, which
thus returned to the hands of the Habsburgs intact, with the
exception of a new town depopulated for lack of defense.
Csaba Ujkéry's historical novels The Shields and Handzsár in the
Mirror by Csaba Ujkéry provide interesting and valuable literary
additions to the historical events and everyday life of the period
of the defensive battles and the last days of local Turkish rule.
The history of the settlement from the recapture of the castle
to the present day
Like some strategically located Transdanubian
castles, the island fortress, while retaining its military role,
remained of paramount importance to the Habsburg government during
the liberation struggles that lasted until the end of the 18th
century, with military troops stationed within its walls for another
hundred years. Simultaneously with the construction of the garrison
buildings, under the direction of military engineer Matthias
Kayserfeld, they began repairing and strengthening the castle's
fortifications as early as the 17th century, which greatly helped
Captain Huyn keep the Island Castle twice attacked by the Kurucs.
However, the military function of the castle became increasingly
insignificant by the 1780s, so II. During the reign of Joseph
(1780–1790), the Council of War sold the castle to Lajos Tolnai
Festetics, who acquired the ownership of the town from Ádám Szily in
1769. The first private owner drained the formerly important
protective lake created by the damming of the Almás stream, as a
result of which the castle lost its character as a classic island
fortress by the end of the century, and the 19th-20th century after
the Festetics family. During the 16th century, it served only as the
economic center of the landlord's estates. A II. The utilization of
the castle, which was nationalized after World War II, began for
tourism purposes in the second half of the 1950s.
Although
the fortress has preserved the 16th-17th centuries to this day. In
the course of its modern history, it was expanded with a few new
elements in terms of its architectural details. Among the
alterations and additions of the 18th century, you can still see the
basket-arched, stone-framed gate that opens near the south-eastern
bastion, which serves as the current main entrance to the castle,
and the baroque clock tower rising in the middle of the southern
wall section. The gates open in the north and east castle walls also
date from the 1700s, as does the row of northern dungeons leaning
against the inner wall surface of the fort. In the area of the
former outer castle is the newest annex, built in the 20th century,
the castle was built in the early 1930s by the last landowner of the
village, Count Mihály Andrássy.
In the peace period following the Rákóczi War of Independence,
the imperial army, still stationed here, had a beneficial effect on
the city's economic life due to its orders and purchasing power, and
new signs of cultural and economic recovery emerged in the wake of
the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
The village was connected
thanks to the Pécs-Barcs railway line, which was put into operation
in May 1868 and later connected to the capital, and later to
Gyékényes via Rijeka, and the Kaposvár-Szigetvár railway, which was
connected to Somogy county until the administrative reorganization
in 1950. into the national transport network, which paved the way
for major industrial investments. The first larger plant, the Fehér
steam mill, started operating in 1881, and a few years later, in
1884, production began at the first plant of the local shoe industry
with a significant history, the Szigetvár Shoe Factory. Canning,
which is also traditional, began in 1937.
The activation of
association life and the proliferation of community institutions can
also be done at this age. The renowned local patriot, Gyula Salamon
and his grandson, Béla Salamon, Rezső Biedermann Turonyi and his
wife, Elza Bleichröder, Ignác Höbling, Ferenc Koharits, György
Vermes were formed as Firefighters Association, the Miklós Zrínyi
Museum Association, the Szigetvár Castle Friends' Circle, the civic
boys' and girls' schools, and the Szigetvár Public Hospital during
the 1880s and 1890s.
In the life of Szigetvár, which has
belonged to Baranya County since 1950, the II. The most important
event of the post-World War II period was certainly the declaration
of the village in 1966 on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of
the heroic castle battle, which was accompanied by significant
settlement and economic development.
The commemoration of the
event, which has a prominent role in Hungarian historical
consciousness, and the memory of the self-sacrificing struggle in
the defense of the homeland, took place in 2011, when the Parliament
passed the law “Civitas Invicta” - the title of the Most Heroic City
to Szigetvár.