Miskolc

Miskolc lies in northeastern Hungary where routes from the Bükk hills meet the plain. King Louis I made it a market town in 1365 and transformed the nearby castle of Diósgyőr into a Gothic fortress. Ottoman forces took Miskolc in 1544, and the town later came under the Eger eyalet after the battle of Mezőkeresztes in 1596. Wine-growing and crafts remained important, with thirteen guilds recorded by the end of the seventeenth century. Francis II Rákóczi used Miskolc as a headquarters during his uprising against Habsburg rule; imperial troops sacked and burned it in 1707. The town recovered and was chosen as the site of Borsod county's hall in 1724. Mills, a brewery and other workshops developed during the eighteenth century, and iron furnaces appeared in the surrounding district around the turn of the nineteenth.