History of Hunedoara

In 1514, during the peasant revolt of György Dózsa, some were imprisoned in the castle and probably tortured. The town numbered 184 houses, a considerable size for the time, and was ruled by an appointed Orthodox priest. In 1528 a fire destroyed 124 houses. In 1534 as the Kingdom of Hungary was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, the castle was besieged during the rebellion of Czibak Imre, the bishop of Oradea and two years later John Zápolya donated the castle along with other possessions to Török Bálint making him the richest nobleman of Hungary. In 1557 Török János, a proselytizer of Reformation is mentioned to have killed his unfaithful wife Kendi Anna in the castle. In 1601 the castle was besieged by the Wallachian army of Michael the Brave in his campaign to unite the Romanian-inhabited principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania against the Ottoman Empire, and to switch the Ottoman vassalage to the Habsburgs.

The town and the castle survived relatively unharmed by the Counter-Reformation of Giorgio Basta, general of the Habsburg Empire. By 1618, ownership of the castle passed to the Bethlen family. Gabriel Bethlen Voivode of Transylvania consolidated and enlarged the castle, and gave it to his nephew Stephen Betlen who lived here with his wife Mary Széchy, famed for her beauty.

The Reformed Church of Hungary was established in Hunedoara in 1634 and Imre Thököly, one the leaders of the Protestant anti-Habsburg uprising and later Prince of Transylvania owned the castle and spent much time living in it. By 1685, the castle passed into the possession of Michael Apafi, the pro-Habsburg Prince of