1672 The rising that ended on a stakePovstanie, ktoré sa skončilo na kole

After the Wesselényi conspiracy against the Habsburgs was uncovered, the government came down hard on Protestant nobles across Upper Hungary — confiscations, garrisons, closed churches. In 1672 Gašpar Pika, the commander of the castle guard at Orava, led a rising of Protestant gentry, soldiers and peasants that seized the castle itself and held much of the county for a few weeks. Imperial troops under General Sporck retook it at the end of November 1672. Pika was impaled on a stake at Oravský Podzámok below the walls; village judges — the richtári, the elected heads of their villages — who had joined him were executed with him, and many prisoners were sent to the galleys. Slovak accounts differ on the exact day and on how many died, which is worth knowing in itself: this is a story that was told from memory for a long time before anyone wrote it down carefully.Keď sa prevalilo Vešeléniho sprisahanie proti Habsburgovcom, vláda tvrdo zakročila proti evanjelickej šľachte v celom Hornom Uhorsku — konfiškácie, posádky, zatvorené kostoly. V roku 1672 viedol Gašpar Pika, veliteľ stráže Oravského hradu, povstanie evanjelických zemanov, vojakov a sedliakov, ktoré sa zmocnilo samotného hradu a na niekoľko týždňov ovládlo veľkú časť stolice. Cisárske vojská generála Sporcka ho koncom novembra 1672 dobyli späť. Piku napichli na kôl v Oravskom Podzámku pod hradom; richtárov — volených predstavených dedín —, ktorí sa k nemu pridali, popravili s ním a mnohých zajatcov poslali na galeje. Slovenské podania sa rozchádzajú v presnom dni aj v počte obetí, a aj to je poučné: túto históriu rozprávali z pamäti dlho predtým, než ju niekto starostlivo zapísal.