the town. Under the leadership of the town and fort captain, Miklós Jurisich, a small garrison repelled an Ottoman force numbering some 80,000 men in the Siege of Kőszeg. After the final unsuccessful attack, the Turkish leadership was forced to decamp due to an uprising by the Janissaries. According to tradition, the last contingent of withdrawing troops was meant to have left the city limits around 11 o'clock. As a memorial to this historic heroism, the church clocks in the town have read 11 o'clock since 1777.
After the Turkish wars, in 1695 the garrison and surrounding areas of Kőszeg fell into the hands of the Esterházy dukes, where it remained until 1931. The town lost its strategic importance after the Rákóczi- Liberation Wars of 1703–1711. Along with Szombathely, Kőszeg was the most important fortress for the kuruc military leadership from 1705–1708, to liberate and hold onto the areas west of the Rába.
The free royal town enjoyed the longest period of peace in its history during the 18th Century. For the first time in the history of the town, there was an attempt, in 1712, to replace the population loss in the town by trying to attract colonists and by founding Schwabendorf (Kőszegfalva).
Kőszeg had already lost its leading role in the garrison county of Vas by the mid 19th Century. Only a few workshops survived the production crisis within the guild system during the Hungarian reformation of the early 19th Century. The founding of public companies, societies and the first financial institution in the county were the first signs of civic development in the town. Alongside the by now typical society made up of small businesses and small traders, Kőszeg developed during this time into a town of schools, sanatoria and garrisons.
World War II and the Holocaust
During World War II, the Jews of Kőszeg were among the last to be deported to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944
