Busha castle
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Busha castle |
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contemporaries. It is known that at the beginning
of the XVIIth century Busha got the status of a town. Favorable geographic position helped
Busha to develop. The traveler Ulrikh Fon Verdum wrote in 1672: “On the conjunction of
two rivers – the Murafa and the Busha – there formed a very sharp rocky place.
There…the town of Busha existed somewhere. You could see the ruins and imagine that the
town was built in the form of a long triangle and the rivers washed it’s two sides…”
The castle was the center of the town. It was situated in the middle of the cape formed by
the two mentioned rivers. The castle was surrounded by a moat and a swell. Probably, the
castle was in the form of a rectangle with the territory of 0,5 hectare. It looked like an
eagle’s nest, 30m over the surface of the Murafa river. Giyom de Boplan said the castle
had six towers each of which had it’s
powder-magazine. The
underground passages connected the towers. The castle’s gate was in the northern wall,
not far from two watch-towers (one of them still exists). The fortifications of the castle
were done according to the demandings of military technology and were good for shooting.
Polish officers compared Busha castle with the fortifications in Kamenets. The building of
the castle in Busha began in the second half of the XVI century. At that period the owner
of those territories was the crown chancellor Jan Zamoyskiy and later – his son Tomash.
In 1629 in Busha there lived more than 2 thousand people. It was a rather big town for
Bratslav Podniestrovie. At the beginning of the XVIIth century Busha castle met the
enemies for the first time. In 1617 not far from Busha, near Yaruga the Polish Army of the
crown hetman Stanislav Zholkevskiy fought with the Tatar forces of Iskander-pasha. That
struggle resulted in the signing of Bushan agreement. That meant for Ezi Zbarazkiy to 
burn his fortress Bershad. Stanislav
Zholkevskiy was near Busha with his string of carts in 1620 going to Cecora. In 1621
Cossacks of hetman Jakob Borodavka fought the Turkish Army of Selim III which was moving
to Khotin. In the years of Liberation War the town of Busha was the border-town of
Bratslav regiment. The castle’s garrison took part in struggles against the forces of
Polish gentry. For example, in March, 1654 near the walls of Busha 3 thousand of Polish
warriors were defeated. The most heroic and tragic events were in the castle on the 18-20th
of November, 1654 when the garrison and the citizens of the town fought with the armed
forces of S. Pototskiy and S. Charnetskiy. In
those terrible day the town was completely destroyed. They tried to reconstruct it during
the century but it was impossible to rebuild the castle.
