Drégelypalánk Summary
Drégelypalánk
Summary
Summary
Drégely – this name sounds familiar even for those who have never been to the castle before, or have not walked along the streets of Drégelypalánk. The name personally addresses us, it is present in the historic consciousness of the Hungarians. A glistening peak of our national culture is reflected in this landscape, among the forests of the Börzsöny.
Drégelypalánk was formed from the merger of two settlements, Drégely and Palánk where the basin of the Ipoly river, and the Börzsöny meet. The first one is a village from the age of Árpád, first mentioned in a charter in 1284.
Its fortress was erected by the Bozóky line of the Hont-Pázmány dynasty between 1275 and 1285, in the XIII century, which was considered to be the golden age of Hungarian castle building. It appeared in charters under the name of Castrum Dragul in 1285. It was taken by Máté Csák, the notorious tyrant, the lord of north-west Hungary at the beginning of the XIV century. After his death (1321), Drégely became a royal estate in the middle of the XIV century, under the rule of the Anjou dynasty. It was seized by a Moravian marquis in 1388, but king Sigismund took it back from him, and donated it to the Tari family in 1390. After a generation’s time, it became a royal estate once again for fifteen years, and then Albert Habsburg gave it to the archbishopric in Esztergom as a present.
The pressing forward Ottoman army having gained control over Buda, and some other castles in 1543–1545 to strengthen their position, made it necessary to organise a new defence system for the whole territory of Hungary.
Pál Várday, the then archbishop-governor of Esztergom, maintained castle guards in his castles in Drégely, Ság, and Újvár at his own costs in the 1540-ies. Drégely acquired a key role in the protection system of the mining towns of lower-Hungary.
During the large military campaign of 1552, Hadim Ali, the pasha of Buda, having seized the town of Veszprém, blockaded the castle with his army of ten thousand soldiers on July 6, 1552. He had the castle ruined by ceaseless gunfire for three or four days, and then he commanded the besiegers to attack. Captain György Szondy, and his valiant soldiers heroically resisted the siege, which lasted for long hours, until they were defeated by the Turkish infantry, superior in numbers. Szondy fought heroically, still fighting as a wounded lion when he was shot by a bullet until he fell under the superiority of the Turks.
The castle, which was ruined, was not re-built by the Turks, but it was repaired, and supplied with guards. With Drégely, Gyarmat, Szécsény, and two years later Fülek and Salgó being occupied by the Turks, the first system of castles along the border was established by the Turks. In 1575, Új-Drégely (New-Drégely), or differently Palánk was built by the fortification of the church in Drégely. The new castle became the headquarters of the incursions aiming at the subjugation of the region of mining towns: this was the centre where taxes imposed on the population of the region were collected.
The dual settlement was liberated from the Turkish rule by Miklós Pálffy, the commander-in-chief, who came from the other side of the Danube during the winter of 1593, at the beginning of the so called long war. Hungarian military command considered it again as a border fortress for two decades.
The castle of Palánk, repaired and strengthened after the Mongolian invasion of 1599, was subdued by the commanders reporting to the princes of Transylvania at the time of the thirty year war. During the military campaign of Köprülü Ahmed, the Grand Vizier in 1663, Érsekújvár fell, the guards of Drégelypalánk had the castle set on fire, and escaped. This was the end of the historic role Palánk had played as the Turks did not have it reconstructed.
After liberation from the Turkish rule, two even legally separated villages could start their new lives. Drégely, which was mentioned as a borough in sources from the XVI–XVII centuries, degraded to the status of a serf village owned by the church. Palánk, which was born in the middle of the XVI century, preserved some of its freedom as a border castle. The leading authority of the settlement was a lieutenant and not a judge. Its population, mostly craftsmen, were exempted from socage, and tithe. They worked as escort to the lords, they delivered the post, and collected and safeguarded the tithe.
Due to their natural resources, the farming activities of Drégely and Palánk were also different. The village first engaged both in corn growing and animal husbandry, although the floods of the Ipoly often caused serious damages on the arable- and grasslands. They also had a significant tobacco and wine production. Compared to this, Palánk only earned its living from wine and tobacco production.
The population of the medieval borough of Drégely did probably not reach a thousand. Its Hungarian population grew with some Germans at the beginning of the XVI century. They, however, left the settlement during the Turkish rule, and escaped to better-protected areas. South-Slavic people came to the settlement during the years of the occupation. In the first third of the XVIII century, German settlers arrived to populate Drégely and Palánk, which were organised into a village.
The population of Drégelypalánk, officially merged during the administrative settlement after the compromise of 1867, amounted to almost one and a half thousand people in 1870.
The tithe register of the Pope of 1332-1337 listed the medieval village of Drégely as a church place. The protecting saint of the vicarage of Drégelypalánk was still Saint Elizabeth. The protestants appeared in Palánk after the middle of the XVI century. The Presbyterian deanery that was formed in Drégelypalánk in the XVIII century, remained even after the Turks were expelled, but the Presbyterian church ceased to exist in Palánk after the peace treaty of Szatmár.
After the large revolutionary events of the XX century – the first and the second World Wars, the Trianon Peace Treaty – the village lost its century-long economic relations. A big part of Hont county was annexed to Chechoslovakia. Between the two world wars, the village lived the life of an average Hungarian small settlement, fraught with hopeless struggles, and squeezed by the large estate. It preserved the values of the past in its culture and customs. It started a dynamic growth from the 1960-ies, with its economy starting along new production lines. Its economic upsurge made it possible to utilise the touristic values of this national memorial place.
In the 1980-ies, the exploration and reconstruction activities initiated by the Börzsöny Society of Friends, started a new uptrend in modern times. A significant progress has been made until now. Among others, the staircased gateway carved in the side of the south cliff was explored, and smaller wall remains on the west part became visible. The exploration and preservation of the castle of Drégely, and the objects of the national memorial place are still carried out today under the management of the Nógrád County Museum.
