Košice

Košice, Kassa to the Hungarians and Kaschau to the Germans, grew along a broad market street on the trade road from Hungary north towards Poland, with guild craftsmen and merchants around the Gothic church of St Elizabeth. In 1312 its townsmen armed for King Charles Robert and helped beat the rebellious oligarchs at Rozgony, and the king rewarded them with privileges. In 1347 Košice ranked second among Hungary's free royal towns, with the same rights as Buda, and in 1369 Louis I gave it a coat of arms, the oldest written grant of its kind to a European town.

Dynastic wars and religion shaped its later fortunes. Poland's Prince John Albert besieged it for six months in 1491 without success. It paid homage to Ferdinand I in 1526, passed to Zápolya in 1536 and was won back in 1551. From 1554 it was seat of the Captaincy of Upper Hungary and of the Spiš Chamber, which governed royal revenues in the northeast. Stephen Bocskai entered Košice in 1604 in his Protestant rising and died there in 1606. The Jesuits opened a university in 1657, and the Habsburgs built a pentagonal citadel south of the town in the 1670s. Francis II Rákóczi made it his base in 1704–11.