Fortress of Deva

The fortress sits above Deva on a volcanic cone 378 metres in altitude, and for centuries it guarded the way in and out of Transylvania along the Mureș valley. Blocks of dressed stone with the characteristic swallowtail cuttings lead archaeologists to suspect a Dacian fortification here. The Roman conquerors strengthened and defended the walls; the salt road that linked the region to the rest of the empire ran past the foot of the hill.

The medieval fortress was raised by King Béla IV of Hungary after the Tatar invasion, its inception dated to 1242.

The first evidence for the medieval fortress belongs to the second half of the 13th century. In 1269 Stephen V, King of Hungary and Duke of Transylvania, son of Béla IV, named "the royal castle of Deva" in a privilege-grant to Count Chyl of Câlnic, a donation rewarding the bravery he had shown in a battle fought under the fortress walls.

The first record of a military operation came four years later. In 1273 the Cumans were beaten beneath the walls by Peter I Csák, Palatine of Hungary, whom Ladislaus IV rewarded for the victory; the king's letter set it down as sub castro Dewa contra Cumanorum exercitur viriliter dimicavit — he fought bravely against the Cumans under the castle of Deva. Romanian tradition names the enemy in that fight as the Tatars.

At the end of the 13th century the fortress became the seat of the voivodes Roland Borșa and Ladislaus Kán, who ruled Transylvania from it and kept a court there beside the military garrison. After 1315 it returned to the possession of King Charles Robert of Anjou, and through the 14th century the castellans of Deva were also counts of Hunedoara.

In that century Deva and its villages appear as a "Wallachian military district", the fortress holding jurisdiction over four seats of the royal domain, led by knezes; the local people owed military service and the upkeep, repair and building work of the fortress. In 1444 the royal fortress and its domain passed to John Hunyadi, Voivode of Transylvania, with 56 villages and the gold mines of the Apuseni Mountains, and the fair of Deva below the hill is first recorded in writing in his time. The Corvin hold on fortress and domain ended in 1504 by some accounts; by others 1504 is the year the family took control.

In 1579 Francis Dávid (1520–1579), the Protestant preacher and founding bishop of the Unitarian Church of Transylvania, was imprisoned at Deva for heresy; he died there on 15 November 1579. General Basta meant to execute the Transylvanian leaders in the same prison. Prince Gabriel Bethlen built a bastion within the fortress that served as prison and place of torture, and at the foot of the hill raised a Renaissance residence, the Magna Curia.

The fortress was strengthened in 1580, and there Török János won his fight against Pasha Kasim. Only in the 17th century did Deva begin to take on real military value. After the Turks took Oradea it remained the one fortress still unoccupied. The Ottomans occupied it in 1657. During the Rákóczi rising it fell to the kuruc in 1704.

From 1713 Deva was rebuilt as a bastioned fortification, strengthened again between 1717 and 1719 and renewed in 1752, by which time its military importance had declined. In 1784 it was attacked during the revolt of the serf peasantry of Transylvania, among whom were the moți Horia, Cloșca and Crișan, and from that point it had no military function. Its new owner, Pogány Franciska, emptied the fortress, which fell rapidly into ruin. In 1817 the Emperor Francis I and his wife, struck by the place on a visit to Transylvania, ordered it restored; the work took twelve years.

In the Hungarian revolution of 1848–1849 the fortress was held by Austrian soldiers under the commander Kudlich, the fighting coming only after the Polish general Bem freed northern Transylvania. In February 1849 revolutionaries under Avram Iancu arrived as friends of the Austrians. The Hungarian revolutionaries succeeded in occupying it, the third of three fortresses held by the honvéds after Buda and Arad. On the morning of 13 August 1849 the powder magazine blew up: much of the fortress was destroyed, the garrison soldiers died in the explosion and the whole eastern side was brought down. On 18 August 1849 General Bem capitulated there to the Habsburg troops.

The ruined hill is protected as a historic monument, and an inclined lift carries visitors up from its foot. The fortress is central to the Hungarian folk tale of the wife of Clement the Mason.