Világos (Romanian Șiria, German Wilagosch, Hellburg ‘Magyarvilágos’ and Schiria ‘Románvilágos’) is a village in Romania, in the county of Arad, most famous for the laying down of the arms of Világos in 1849. The castle that gave the village its name (apparently called Világos because of the color of its walls) still has walls with several floors in places, and its ruins offer a wonderful view of the plain and the surrounding countryside.
The ruins of the castle stand on the 496-metre-high castle hill. We know that the Cistercian Abbey of Világos was founded in 1190. The remains of the castle, built around the 13th century, can still be seen above Világos, although some believe that the castle was built as early as the 12th century. It was originally a royal castle and its castellans also held the rank of Comes of Zaránd.
According to some, it was first mentioned in writing in 1324, but there is also a reference from 1318 (Wy[lagos]war), probably named after the light color of the castle. In 1330 it was the castellan, Dezső, who saved the life of King Károly Róbert.
In 1331 it already had a considerable garrison. In 1390 King Zsigmond (Sigismund) donated it to Sárói László, the Comes of Temes, but the following year he took it back in exchange for other lands. The settlement of the castle was a manorial center from 1331 and the church of St Martin was first mentioned in 1403. It was continuously mentioned as an oppidum in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Photo: Lánczi Imre
In 1439 King Albert gave the castle and its 145 towns, villages, and outlying lands to the Serbian despot George Brankovic in exchange for Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade). Documents from 1440 mention a Stefan Voivode of Világos.
In 1440, King Ulászló I confiscated the castle because of Brankovic’s infidelity and in 1441 gave it to Maróthy László, the chief Comes of Arad. However, the castle remained in Brankovic’s hands and was only handed over to Hunyadi János in 1444. After Hunyadi’s death, the castle was inherited by his sons László and Mátyás (Matthias), but Mátyás ceded it to Szilágyi Mihály.
In 1458, Matthias, already reigning as king, had Szilágyi Mihály captured and imprisoned in his own castle. From the autumn of 1458 until June 1459, Szilágyi Mihály was imprisoned here, when his cook, Lábatlan Gergely, managed to free him. Later, Matthias relented and gave back his estates. After Szilágyi’s death, his widow Báthory Margit became the heir.
In 1514, it was besieged by György Dózsa’s army of rebellious peasants and then fell into the hands of Szapolyai János. After Szapolyai János had recaptured it from the peasants, he refused to return it to its owner, Palatine Báthori István. In 1526 he gave it to Czibak Imre, Bishop of Várad. After the Battle of Mohács, it was returned to the pro-Ferdinand Bátori.
In 1528, at Szapolyai’s call, a 600-strong Turkish army besieged the castle, but the defenders, led by Bátori’s castellan Balica, resisted. However, in 1529 his parish priest gave the castle to Szapolyai by a trick. In 1525 51 serfs, 35 poor peasants, 9 servants, 5 masters, and 3 free family heads lived in Világos. The Turks occupied it in 1566. In the 1570s, fewer than a hundred Turks were stationed there. In 1588 a palisade was built around it.
It was only in 1595 that Prince Báthory Zsigmond, with the help of Borbély Gábor, the Ban (Duke) of Lugos-Karánsebes, managed to regain it. At the beginning of the 1600s, it was again under Turkish rule. In 1606, the captain of Jene, Petneházy István, tried to conquer it for Prince Bocskai István by a trick but failed.
In 1608, Prince Bethlen Gábor donated the castle to the Petneházy while it was still under Turkish rule. In 1613, Petneházy István bombarded the castle with cannons for fourteen days, but was unable to take it, and only in 1614 was he able to do so. In 1615 the Christian garrison of mercenaries surrendered the castle to the Turkish Pasha of Lippa for non-payment of wages. In 1660 the Turkish traveller Evlija Chelebi counted 60 households in the castle and 45 in the settlement below the castle. At the visit of Evlija Chelebi, the walls of the castle were painted.
It was liberated by General Sigbert Heister in 1693, but by then the castle was in a very dilapidated state. In the last decades of the Turkish occupation, it was inhabited mainly by Serbs. In 1699 it was attached to the Serbian border regiment.
According to local tradition, as described by Slavici, the first Romanians arrived from Olténia at the end of the 17th century. This was followed by a wave of Moldavian settlements, the most significant of which, with the arrival of Romanians from Transylvania and the Körösök region, took place at the end of the 18th century.
By contrast, in 1745-1746, 4/5 of the population of the old village was Romanian and only 1/5 Serbian. Several local Serbian families probably moved to New Serbia, established in 1752 on the territory of the Russian Empire, where they founded a new village called Vilagos (now Derijivka) at the north-eastern end of the territory.
The date of settlement of the German inhabitants is not clear. According to some sources, between 1724 and 1726, 70 German families settled in the Németvilágos, north of the old village. However, 1753 is more commonly cited as the year of German settlement, when the Roman Catholic Church was re-established. The Germans came from Hesse, Alsace, Baden, and the Palatinate, and the dialect of the community was of the southern Frankish-Allemannian type, with elements of the Rhineland.
In the 1770s new German settlers arrived from Elek and Szentmárton, and in 1839 from the burnt-out town of Ószentanna. Hungarians continued to arrive from nearby lowland settlements of the Great Hungarian Plain. In the 1830s, the Bohus family also settled Slovaks from the lowlands, who lived in separate streets.
In 1755, the castle was bought by Bohus Imre, who used the stones to build his mansion. In 1779, Bél Mátyás described it as largely ruined. In 1784, during the Horea-Closca peasant uprising, the authorities used cannon fire to destroy the remains of the castle so that it could not shelter the rebels.
At the end of the Hungarian War of Independence, on 12 August 1849, Görgei Artur, who had been given full authority, arrived here from Arad to lay down his arms before the Russian army. He and his regular staff stayed at the Bohus Castle. It was here that he signed the treaty of unconditional surrender. The surrender itself took place the next day on the field of Szőllős.
In 1900, of the 6,694 inhabitants, 4,342 were Romanians, 1,277 Hungarians, and 1,025 Germans; 3,670 were Orthodox, 2,077 Roman Catholics, 718 Greek Catholics, 111 Jews, and 88 Reformed. 41% of the population could read and write, and 20% of the non-Hungarians spoke Hungarian.
The last battle took place in the castle of Világos in the autumn of 1944 when a remnant unit of the I. Horthy Miklós Panzer Division took up positions there, and twenty soldiers defended the ruins to the end.
In 2002, of the 5,007 inhabitants, 3,851 were Romanian, 839 Gypsy, 201 Hungarian, and 87 German; 3,714 Orthodox, 704 Pentecostal, 279 Roman Catholic, 223 Baptist, and 123 Adventist.
Source: https://traveltotransylvania.hu/2020/04/15/vilagos-vara/ and Hungarian Wikipedia
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Here are more pictures of Világos Castle:
