All over Slovakia you hear that this or that castle was destroyed by the Turks. Levice is a clean example of why to be suspicious. The castle came through the Ottoman wars; its ruin began with a town fire in 1696 and was finished by the kuruc — the insurgents of Francis II Rákóczi — who held it from the early 1700s, pulled the defences down and filled the moat before marching away in 1709. Nobody ever rebuilt it. They were wrecking a fortress so that the emperor's army could not use it after them, which is a very different story from the one the legend tells.Po celom Slovensku počuť, že ten či onen hrad „zničili Turci“. Levice sú ukážkou, prečo tomu netreba veriť automaticky. Hrad prežil osmanské vojny; jeho koniec sa začal požiarom mesta v roku 1696 a dokončili ho kuruci — povstalci Františka II. Rákócziho — ktorí ho držali od začiatku 18. storočia, pred odchodom v roku 1709 rozobrali opevnenie a zasypali priekopu. Nikto ho už nepostavil. Ničili pevnosť preto, aby ju po nich nemohlo použiť cisárske vojsko, a to je celkom iný príbeh, než rozpráva povesť.
