33 Castles, Battles, Legends

Hungarian-Ottoman War Series, #1

Europe was torn by religious and dynastic wars in the 16th century while the mighty Ottoman Empire was getting ready to conquer the countries of the Christian world. The Hungarians had contributed vastly more than their share to the steady development of the European civilization in this time.Unfortunately, the Hungarians’ role in the Ottoman Wars is quite underrepresented and neglected both in the academic works and in the popular history publications and TV channels. The Hungarian-Ottoman War Series aims to fill this gap by making this age more popular in the English language. Let us meet and pay tribute to the generations of long-forgotten heroes. Their struggles largely took place between 1372 and 1699, enabling the safe prosperity of the luckier part of western Europe. This is the first book of a coming series which wants to offer a glimpse into the life of the castles of the 1,000-mile-long Hungarian-Croatian-Transylvanian Borderland, beginning with some of the northern castles of the old Hungarian Kingdom. This wonderous Frontier was the longest structure of defense system of Europe which had worked for the longest period, partly financed and maintained by the Austrian Habsburgs and by the Hungarian nobles and by the warriors called the Valiant Order. There are many beautiful castles and many ruins on hilltops with stories and legends attached to them all along this long frontier. They have witnessed smaller or bigger raids, battles and sieges, have seen many cowardice, bloodshed and cruelty. The stories of my book are based on the records of contemporary historians and on the tales of the local folks. Some of them are just fairy tales or family-legends, made up by the imagination of the next generations but there is always a little truth in them. In order to describe some battles and sieges in a more entertaining manner, sometimes I tried to apply the rules of the historical fiction, adding details from my own imagination.
There are hundreds of wonderful castles from the Croatian seaside of the Adriatic Sea through the Trans-Danubian Region up to the northern Carpathian Mountains. Many of them will be described in the coming series, including the major battles and sieges in their proximity. All these castles used to be part either of the Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia or Transylvania but now they can be found in eight different modern countries which presently share the Carpathian Basin. These countries are Austria, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Ukraine, Slovakia and of course, Hungary. 
In this book, I have chosen thirty-three castles from those which used to guard the northern part of the Hungarian Kingdom against the Ottoman Empire. The westernmost castle of them is Dévény Castle which is located in Slovakia, near to the Austrian border while the easternmost is Munkács Castle which is now in Ukraine.Their old Hungarian name is commonly used in the stories and in their historical descriptions but I gave the modern names and the GPS coordinates as well so as to find them easier on new maps because these fabulous places are worth visiting. Also, I have included some pictures into this e-book but you can find more if you visit my Facebook page, the „Hungaries-1632" where more information can be found about the castles and the historical period.