1848 – 1849 Serfdom ends, and armies cross the townKoniec poddanstva a vojská cez mesto

The revolution of 1848 abolished serfdom — the legal bond that tied a peasant family to a landlord's estate — and that changed the countryside around Košice more than anything since the Mongols: villagers were now free to move, and many of them eventually moved here. The town itself was fought over. Imperial and Hungarian armies crossed and re-crossed this corner of the kingdom in the winter of 1848–49 and Košice changed hands more than once; Slovak volunteers reached the city during the winter campaign that also took them to Prešov and Martin. When the Hungarian revolution was crushed in August 1849, with Russian help, the losers included both the Hungarian liberals and the Slovak nationalists who had fought against them — Vienna thanked neither.Revolúcia roku 1848 zrušila poddanstvo — právne puto, ktoré viazalo roľnícku rodinu k zemepanskému panstvu — a to zmenilo vidiek okolo Košíc viac než čokoľvek od čias Mongolov: dedinčania sa mohli sťahovať a mnohí sa napokon presťahovali práve sem. O mesto sa bojovalo. Cisárske a uhorské vojská prechádzali týmto kútom kráľovstva sem a tam počas zimy 1848 – 1849 a Košice viackrát zmenili majiteľa; počas zimnej výpravy, ktorá ich zaviedla aj do Prešova a do Martina, sem prišli aj slovenskí dobrovoľníci. Keď bola v auguste 1849 maďarská revolúcia s ruskou pomocou porazená, medzi porazenými boli aj maďarskí liberáli, aj slovenskí národovci, ktorí proti nim bojovali — Viedeň nepoďakovala ani jedným.