Częstochowa grew around a fortified monastery that Swedish armies repeatedly failed to take
Millions of pilgrims travel each year to a hilltop monastery in southern Poland to see the Black Madonna, an icon of Mary that arrived in 1384. The town below was burned and rebuilt several times, while the walled monastery held out against Swedish, Russian and Austrian sieges and even imprisoned a self-proclaimed Jewish messiah.
Jasna Góra was founded in 1382 by Vladislaus II of Opole, a Piast prince of Upper Silesia, for the Pauline order, and received its icon two years later. Pilgrims fed the neighbouring settlement, which had first appeared in a 1220 property list drawn up by the Bishop of Kraków. In the early 17th century the Vasa kings turned the monastery into a modern Dutch-style fortress, and during the Swedish invasion of 1655 it became a pocket of Polish resistance even as the town itself lost roughly half its people and 60% of its houses.
Swedes returned during the Great Northern War, capturing the town in 1702 and besieging the monastery in 1703 without success before burning Częstochowa and leaving. In 1769 rebels of the Bar Confederation under Kazimierz Pułaski seized the stronghold, and Russian forces besieging them gave up on 15 January 1771. An Austrian attempt in 1809 also failed; only in 1813, after a two-week siege, did Russian troops take it, and the fortifications were razed that year.
The monastery doubled as a prison. In 1760 the church locked up Jacob Frank, leader of a sect blending Kabbalah, Catholicism and Islam, for heresy; his followers settled nearby, and Frankism led to a mass conversion to Catholicism. A Russian general freed Frank in August 1772 after he promised to persuade Jews to embrace Orthodox Christianity.
Modern Częstochowa formed when Old and New Częstochowa officially merged on 19 August 1826, joined by a grand avenue begun in 1819. The Warsaw-Vienna railway arrived in 1846, and iron ore worked after 1870 brought steel, textile and paper mills. By 1897 about 26% of its 45,130 residents were Jewish. Today it has 214,342 inhabitants, making it Poland's thirteenth-largest city.
Source: Częstochowa
