Vyškov

Vyškov lies on the Haná at a crossroads of routes from Brno towards Olomouc and Kroměříž. First mentioned in a bishop's deed in 1141, it came into the hands of the bishops of Olomouc in the thirteenth century and became a town. Fortifications followed in the fourteenth century, with stone walls built in the fifteenth.

The Hussites captured and ravaged Vyškov, which recovered under Bishop Tas of Černá Hora later in the fifteenth century. The Thirty Years' War brought another disaster: Swedish troops took the town twice and plundered it in 1643, leaving only about a third of its houses and inhabitants. Bishop Karl II von Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn rebuilt and enlarged the castle and its garden, earning Vyškov the name of the Moravian Versailles. A great fire burned the town and castle in 1753; in 1805 the emperors of Austria and Russia met at the castle before the Battle of Austerlitz.