Nagyecsed is a town in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, in the Northern Great Plain

region In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics ( physical geography), human impact characteristics ( human geography), and the interaction of humanity an ...

of eastern

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

. The old name of the town was Ecsed but over time it has been renamed Nagyecsed, meaning "grand" or "great Ecsed" to distinguish it. The area had close associations with a cadet branch of the

Báthory family The Báthory family ( pl, Batory) was a Hungarian noble family of the Gutkeled clan. The family rose to significant influence in Central Europe during the Late Middle Ages, holding high military, administrative and ecclesiastical positions in ...

. Elizabeth Báthory was raised in the town's now

ruined Ruins () are the remains of a civilization's architecture. The term refers to formerly intact structures that have fallen into a state of partial or total disrepair over time due to a variety of factors, such as lack of maintenance, deliberate ...

castle. Her main residence and later her prison was Csejte Castle, Upper Hungary, now in

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...

, but she was buried in the family crypt at Ecsed. The town's castle was demolished in the eighteenth century after the

Kuruc Kuruc (, plural ''kurucok''), also spelled kurutz, refers to a group of armed anti-Habsburg insurgents in the Kingdom of Hungary between 1671 and 1711. Over time, the term kuruc has come to designate Hungarians who advocate strict national ind ...

uprisings.

Geography

It covers an area of and has a population of 6706 people (2005). The town is divided in two by the Crasna River. It formerly lay north west of the Ecsed Marsh (Ecsedi-láp), which was the largest contiguous marshland of the Great Hungarian Plain. As part of water control operations by Tibor Károlyi this was drained in the late nineteenth century, and the lands thus reclaimed transformed into farmland.

Notable people

* Bódi Guszti (born 1958), a Lovari Romani,

Gypsy The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have diaspora populations located worldwide, with sign ...

, Hungarian musician, composer and singer

References

Populated places in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County Elizabeth Báthory {{Szabolcs-geo-stub