Bács

Bač gave its name to the fertile country between the Danube and the Tisza. Its fortress stood above the Mostonga, once surrounded by water and reached by a movable bridge. A seat of the archbishops of Kalocsa, the town was a place of markets and a stronghold of southern Hungary.

The surviving fortress was built in the reign of Charles Robert in the fourteenth century. Bač became a gathering place for armies facing Ottoman expansion, but fell to the Ottomans after the battle of Mohács in 1526. It remained under their rule until the Habsburg conquest of the region in the late seventeenth century. During Francis II Rákóczi's uprising, the fortress was repeatedly mined in 1703 and 1704 and left unusable. The town recovered as a market centre and received the right to hold four annual fairs in 1719.