1241 – 1255 What the Mongols left behind: a charterČo po Mongoloch zostalo: listina

The Mongol army that destroyed the Hungarian king's forces in 1241 stormed no castle here, because there was no castle here to storm. What the invasion did to this valley it did to the whole kingdom: it emptied it of people. Béla IV spent the years afterwards building stone castles and buying settlers, inviting hospites — 'guests' — with promises of freedom and land. In 1255 he granted wide municipal privileges to his 'guests from the new settlement of Bystrica', and German miners, many of them from Thuringia, came for the copper and silver. The first document in this town's history is therefore a consequence of the Mongols: not of what they destroyed here, but of what the king had to do everywhere afterwards.Mongolské vojsko, ktoré v roku 1241 rozdrvilo uhorské kráľovské sily, tu nedobýjalo nijaký hrad — nebolo čo dobýjať. To, čo vpád urobil tejto doline, urobil celému kráľovstvu: vyľudnil ju. Belo IV. potom roky staval kamenné hrady a kupoval si osadníkov: pozýval hostí (hospites) a sľuboval im slobody i pôdu. V roku 1255 udelil rozsiahle mestské výsady „svojim hosťom z novej osady Bystrice“ a nemeckí baníci, mnohí z Durínska, sem prišli za meďou a striebrom. Prvá listina v dejinách tohto mesta je teda dôsledkom Mongolov — nie toho, čo tu zničili, ale toho, čo musel kráľ potom robiť všade inde.