Location: Rakvere, Lääne-Viru County Map
Tel. (372) 322 5502
Constructed: 1346 by Livonian Order
Open:
May- Sep: 11am- 7pm
Oct- Apr: advanced booking only
Price: Adult
4.5 Euro
Family: 9 Euro
Students: 3.5 Euro
Rakvere Castle is a partially preserved medieval citadel located in Rakvere of Lääne-Viru County in Estonia. Rakvere Castle was constructed in 1346 by Livonian Order that needed a series of military fortifications to defend their lands. During Livonian War (1558- 1583) Rakvere Castle was attacked several times by the Russians. But the final blow occurred in 1605 then retreating joint forces of Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth blew up the citadel so it won't be used by the advancing Swedish armies. It was abandoned ever since until 20th century then the castle in Rakvere became its restoration project. Today Rakvere Castle houses a museum of Livonian order as well as exhibits of medieval warfare and tools of torture. Unlike other museums you can try out these weapons. And if shooting arrows or sword fighting is not your thing, you can try hand in minting coins, forging, pottery and etc. Additionally Rakvere Castle has a wine cellar in the well preserved basement of the Rakvere Castle as well as Schenkenberg's Pub with medieval recipes.
The oldest known archaeological traces of the ancient fortress on
Rakvere Vallimäe date back to the 5th-6th centuries. century. It is
believed to have been a fairly simple fortress with weak defensive
structures, limited only by a pine fence. The strengthening of the
wooden defensive buildings of the castle could also take place in the
11th-12th centuries. century. The fortress did not have a stone wall,
because there was no suitable building material in the surrounding area.
It is not possible to say anything more precise about the wooden fort,
because it was almost completely covered by the later stone fort and was
destroyed along with the ancient soil during construction and
reconstruction works lasting several centuries.
North of the
castle, in the lower part of the rampart, today's Teatrimäe, there was a
settlement in ancient times, whose handmade ceramics and a few
arrowheads found in the cultural layer suggest that it existed already
in the second half of the 1st millennium and at the turn of the 1st and
2nd millennium.
As it turns out from Henrik's Chronicle of
Livonia, the fort was already called Tarvanpe (Tharwanpe) at the
beginning of the 13th century, which is connected with the fort's Danish
name Wesenberg (wesent - tarvas in Low German, first mentioned in 1252)
and the image of a tarva's head on the seal of the later city. The
Russian name of the city, Rakovor (Rakobor), is first mentioned in the
Novgorod leet cup in 1268.
In 1226, the vassal of the bishop of Tartu, Johannes Dolen, conquered
Tarvanpe. Presumably, he had the support of Magister Johannes, the local
deputy administrator of the papacy, with whom they attacked the Danes.
Dietrich von Kyvel, who by 1241 had become the largest landowner in
Virumaa, was probably one of Johannes Dolen's companions. D. von Kyvel's
estate included the Tarvanpe castle and all the surrounding villages, as
well as the port of Tools, the port at the mouth of the Purtse river and
the crossing point of the Purtse river on the Tallinn-Narva road. With
the peace treaty of Stensby concluded in 1238, the Danes got back North
Estonia and also Tarvanpe.
After the final entry into force of
Danish rule in Northern Estonia in the second quarter of the 13th
century, the Danish king formed the Duchy of Estonia there, which
included the ancient counties of Harju and Viru. The Duchy of Estonia
was neither a state nor a national administrative unit, but the personal
property of the Danish kings. Danish kings bore the title of duke of
Estonia (ld dux Estoniae). Danish laws did not apply in the Duchy of
Estonia, this area had a special status that was not affected by the
economic and political events taking place in Denmark.
In the
name of the king, a deputy administrator with broad powers residing in
the Tallinn fortress, who was called a captain or chief (ld capitaneus),
exercised power on the spot. As a rule, the deputy administrator was a
high Danish nobleman, who was also a member of the Danish State Council
at the same time. Since the capitaneus was often in Denmark, he had to
be replaced by the so-called five-captain in his absence. In addition to
these two, the duchy was governed by the county council, which consisted
of 12 (later 15) county councilors, who were chosen by the king from
among the knights of Harju-Viru.
The backbone of the military
security system of the Duchy of Estonia was formed by three royal
fortresses: Tallinn, Rakvere and Narva. Each fortress had a garrison,
whose members were called "castrenses" (ld castrenses).
In 1268,
the people of Novgorod, together with the help of allies invited from
all over Russia, tried to capture Rakvere Castle. They were opposed by a
joint force of the Danes, Viljandi and Paide order brothers and the
bishop of Tartu, in which many Estonians were also involved. The
Russians did win the battle of Rakvere, but at such a price that they
returned home from the fort without being besieged.
Conquering
Rakvere, despite the siege machines brought by the Novgorodians, would
not have been easy, because the Danes already started to build their
stronghold over the ancient fortress in the second quarter of the 13th
century, using the rampart and wooden palisade built by the Estonians.
Then the first stone buildings were built, the oldest of which are
fragments of two half-cellars in the southwest corner of the later main
fortress. At the beginning of the 14th century, the Danes built a new
stone ring wall up to 2 meters thick. The wall is laid as a mixed
masonry on lime mortar, where, in addition to ground and round
limestone, also broken pavers are used. The height of the western wall
was up to 7 meters, and on top of it there was a defensive passage
resting on bulwarks. The defensive wall was later built three more times
higher. The circular wall followed the shape of the surface and
represented an irregular quadrangle.
Unfortunately, not much is
known about the fortress during the Danish period, its vice-governors
have also remained unknown. In 1302, the settlement formed on the
northern and eastern sides of the fortress received city rights.
On April 23, 1343, the Estonian uprising began in the duchy of Estonia
(Harju-Viru) - the Jüriöö uprising, which also spread to Lääne and
Saaremaa. Since the Danish king was unable to suppress the uprising on
his own, he was forced to accept the help of the Livonian Order. On May
16, 1343, the vassals of Harju-Viru surrendered to the protection of the
order. After crushing the Estonian army in the battle of Sõjamäe on May
14, the army of the Order suppressed the uprising and seized the most
important fortresses of the Duchy of Estonia, including Rakvere
fortress. In 1346, the Danish king Valdemar IV sold the Duchy of Estonia
for 19,000 silver marks (~4.4 tons of silver) to the Teutonic Order,
which in turn passed it on to the Livonian Order the following year.
During the time of the Order, the fortress was the center of the
bailiff of Rakvere, which was led by a bailiff. He held the highest
military, judicial and administrative power in the region. In case of
war, the bailiff had to collect local nobles in his troop and go with
them to the Order's army, he led the Virumaa Men's Court, which settled
civil and criminal cases between nobles, collected taxes and managed the
Order's estates.
The Rakvere bailiff was bordered in the east by
the Narva and Vasknarva bailiffs, in the south initially by the
Põltsamaa bailiff, later by the Viljandi bailiff, in the southwest by
the Järva bailiff and in the west by the Tallinn bailiff. The western
border of the Vogtkonna was the Valgejõgi, the eastern border was the
Putse river.
In 1471, the master of the order Johann Wolthus von
Herse formed the independent Toolse fiefdom in the northern part of the
fiefdom, which included some areas around the Toolse fortress and in
Järva County. Since Toolse port was one of the most important trading
places in Virumaa and Rakvere's sea gate at the time, Dietrich Lappe von
Konningen, the bailiff of Rakvere at the time, did not like the
establishment of a new bailiff. Due to his opposition to the Master of
the Order's plan, von Herse sent him away from Rakvere to Pärnu Komtour,
where he is said to have remained so poor that he could not pay his
servants at the end of the year. Since Berent von der Borch, the order's
field marshal at the time, had also served as a brother of the order in
Rakvere, they found a common language, gathered the opposition against
Herse and overthrew him. D. Lappe von Konningen became bailiff of
Rakvere again and B. von der Borch became master of the order. Among the
bailiffs, Robert de Grave also stood out, who in 1525 went on a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Santiago de Compostela and the tomb of St.
Hubert and was a diplomat, representing the order to the Roman Pope
Clemens VII and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of the German Nation.
Gerhard Huyn von Amstenraide, the last bailiff of Rakvere fortress, has
gone down in history as a rather negative character. According to the
chronicler Balthasar Russow, he was "a public harlot, and lived a life
of public shame not only with indecent women, but also with the married
wives of other men. And the daily work of the servants of the lords of
the order was nothing more than prancing and the pursuit of sexual
pleasure, which, however, was not considered a shame, but even
considered an honor and virtue ."
At the end of the time of the
Order, the Rakvere fortress owned three manors - Küti, Laanemõisa and
Rakvere - and from there 150 marks were received annually into the Order
treasury. In case of war, 250 horsemen had to be displayed in the
Rakvere fortress together with local nobles. The nobles lived in homes
and had to gather in case of an attack.
During the time of the
Order, the expansion of the fortress and the construction of the main
fortress began. The new defensive wall was moved 15.6 meters to the
north and now included the foot of the hill. Along with the outer wall,
a building wing with sunken basements was also built. To the east of
this, in the north wall, there was a gate with a parham wall on the
north side. This wing was later built one floor higher and with it a new
gate complex. At the same time, the northern part of the first circular
wall was partially demolished and its western part was used as the base
of the massive tower's northern wall. However, in the construction of
the west tower with a rectangular ground plan, only the broken span was
already used. A new east-west wall was built above the south wall of the
tower. With it, the entrance to the main fortress, which was forming in
the northern part, was separated. In the southern part of the main
fortress there were wooden buildings heated by stoves. The courtyard of
the castle got its dimensions that have been preserved to this day.
The northern part of the castle was designed as a convention
building. More or less continuous construction continued until the
beginning of the 16th century. During the construction of the south
wing, the heights of the other walls were also equalized and two
flanking corner towers and the east gate complex were built. By that
time, the Rakvere Order Castle had become a powerful complex of
defensive facilities, already largely adapted for firearms. The square
and four-story towers were left with firing holes for firearms. One of
the towers in the southwest of the castle was built as a rondel, i.e. a
round cannon tower, which also gave the castle the shape of a regional
building, where the individual wings were connected by a cross passage
surrounding the courtyard, which was vaulted on the first floor. The
entrance to the castle was a large gate building with two eastern gates,
one of which was equipped with a drawbridge and a so-called "wolf hole"
and an internal trapdoor. Adjacent to the gate construction was a
massive semi-circular rondel, where there was a guard room with a
fireplace and a hypocaust furnace on the north side.
The period of the Livonian War can be considered one of the peak
periods in the history of the Rakvere Fortress, because before the
outbreak of the war, the relatively insignificant inland fortress became
an important border fortress on Russia's western border against the
conquest efforts of Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom and a
stronghold for the Russians' continued conquest policy in Livonia.
The Livonian War began on January 22, 1558 with the invasion of the
Russian troops of Šig-Alei (Šahh-Ali) into the possessions of the Bishop
of Tartu. The Russians moved towards Tartu while looting, stayed there
for three days and then went to Laius and Kärkna and from there via
Järvamaa to Virumaa, where they also tried to loot Rakvere, but were
repulsed. After the Russians captured Narva on May 11 and Tartu
capitulated on July 18, Livonia was hit by a general attack, during
which many fortresses, including Rakvere, fell to the Russians without
resistance. J. Renner described the fall of Rakvere as follows: "This
main castle of Virumaa was not very secure, there were 11 fighting
Germans there at the time. The Russians sent three men there and
demanded its surrender and gave the bailiff 14 days to think. In the
meantime, the bailiff let all the money, armor, to take equipment, food,
household goods and other things to Tallinn. This was found out to the
Russians by the peasants, so they came back within 14 days and wanted to
take this property. The servants were at the cannons and wanted to
shoot, the bailiff did not want to allow this, because he meant Põlula
Manor (located one mile from Rakvere) to get a living for himself, as he
was promised by the Russians. But all the equipment and provisions had
all reached Tallinn, so the bailiff left the fortress and handed it over
to the Russians. However, when they did not find anything in the
fortress, they chased after it and plundered it the carts with the
servants' belongings on them, which they surrendered. At the same time,
one Russian was shot. When the bailiff arrived in Tallinn, he sent his
servants away, leaving two writers with him. After a while he was
arrested and several thousand guilders were taken from him because he
had given up the fortress. In Rakvere, the Russian got 7 falcons, 30
lard, some rye and various other things."
Since for the Russians the Rakvere border fortress and its existing
defense system were outdated and did not meet the needs of modern
warfare based on the use of firearms, they began to expand and fortify
it in the late summer of 1558 and the spring of 1559. To modernize the
fortress, the Russians built a large wooden rampart on its north, south
and east sides. To do this, they dug down a long mountain column quite
steeply in front of the fort and built a stone wall around the fort on
the edge of the hill, for which they demolished the monastery, the
church and the guild house as well as the stone citizens' houses and
hauled the stones to their construction. Then they built pillboxes,
blockhouses, high towers and bastions from the ground and logs around
the hill and the wall. Blockhouses and pulverges were filled with large
heavy field stones and strongly connected and fortified. They also built
several hundred houses between the ramparts, where several thousand men
could live. The old stone fort was used as a prison and a storehouse for
supplies, where no Russian was allowed to live except the voivode.
In the conquered territories of Livonia, an administrative system
peculiar to Russia was established. The Rakvere fortress became the
center of the county of the same name. The two voivodes leading it were
subordinate to the deputy governor and voivode of Tsarist Livonia
located in Tartu, and this in turn to the service brigadier, through
which the appointments of voivodes took place. In Rakvere County, two
voivodes were usually appointed for a period of one or two years. Since
Rakvere was the county seat, the voivodships there performed
administrative and diplomatic functions in addition to military tasks.
As military leaders, they organized the defense of the fortress and the
county and, if necessary, participated in campaigns with their own
troops. They organized the military service of the county serfs and paid
the soldiers of the fortress garrison. They had the duty to report in
writing to the tsar the events that took place in their region. As the
tsar's deputy administrator, the voivods dealt with tax collection,
resolving land ownership and use issues, keeping land accounting books,
or so-called record books, organizing court hearings, and so on.
Rakvere county was formed by the areas of the former Rakvere and Toolse
fiefdoms, whose western border with Harju and Järvamaa was the Valgejõgi
river, and the eastern border with Alutaguse and the Purtse river. In
1570, Toolse Castle, which had its own voivodeship, was restored in
Rakvere county. It is believed that Rakvere also had a post office and a
functioning postal connection with Russia.
The garrison of the
castle was made up of serfs - in 1563 there were 90 men in the county -
who received land near the place of service for the duration of their
service, with the income from which they had to support themselves,
procure equipment for service and keep it in order, and take a certain
number of soldiers with them, the castle nobles, whose the landholding
often included only a couple of farms, and a yearling who was
temporarily in the service. In addition to the fighters of noble origin,
who generally formed the commanding staff of the force, the garrison
also included ordinary soldiers: mounted riflemen or strelets,
artillerymen, Cossacks and Tatars. Apart from military personnel, the
garrison of the fortress also included civil servants: dyaks, sub-dyaks,
scribes, translators and various craftsmen (blacksmiths, carpenters,
parkals, etc.). Since there was an Orthodox church in the fortress, the
clergy also had to serve there.
Until the death of King Gustav Vasa on September 29, 1560, the
Kingdom of Sweden did not intervene in the war that broke out in
Livonia. Having waged an unsuccessful war with Russia in 1554-1557, the
aging king wanted to avoid conflict. Erik XIV, who became king of Sweden
after the death of Gustav Vasa, did not agree, and in 1561 he accepted
the loyalty oath of the vassals of Tallinn and Harju-Viru. This move led
to a significant deterioration in relations with Denmark, which
culminated in the Nordic Seven Years' War from 1563 to 1570.
The
Swedish-Russian war began with the siege of Tallinn in August 1570, in
March 1571 by Duke Magnus, the brother of the Danish king Frederik II,
the bishop of Saare-Läne and who received the title of king of Livonia
from Ivan IV. During the siege, the Russian troops mutilated themselves
at the expense of the peasants of Harju and Järvamaa, often robbing them
to pieces. Therefore, after the departure of the Russian troops, they
started to organize raids to Virumae, which was under the rule of the
Russians, in order to provide themselves with the main food. In the
middle of December 1572, a large Russian army gathered near Rakvere,
which headed to Paide at the end of December and conquered it on January
1, 1573 by storm. It is believed that Ivan IV stopped at the Rakvere
fortress some time before going under Paide.
In 1573, King Johan
III assigned his Livonian commander Claes Åkeson Totti (1525-1590) the
task of conquering Narva in cooperation with the fleet led by Admiral
Hermann Fleming. This would have cut off an important supply route for
the Russians to Livonia and put an end to the Russian trade in Narva, of
which, despite international agreements and the direct ban of the German
emperor, military equipment made up an important part. In 1573, nothing
came of the campaign, but according to the king's new instructions, the
campaign was undertaken at the beginning of 1574. By that time, the
Swedes had gathered an unprecedentedly large field force in Tallinn.
According to Werner Tawaststjerna, at the end of 1573, the Swedes had 17
squadrons of cavalry in Finland and Livonia with a total of 4,478 men,
including seven German, five Scottish, and five Swedish and Finnish
squadrons. There were 28 battalions of infantry, or 8,820 men, including
seven Scottish and 21 Swedish and Finnish battalions. In total, there
were 13,298 men in Livonia and Finland, of which only 2,500 were in
Finland, while in Livonia there were almost 11,000 cavalry and infantry.
4,000 Scottish mercenaries hired by King Johan III arrived in Livonia in
the fall of 1573. Even before coming to Livonia, they had demanded
payment of their wages, but the king did not have it. Finally, he was
forced to give the Scots money that was intended for the German
horsemen, which made the latter hate them. The Scots also refused to go
under Rakvere until they had received at least one more month's salary,
and demanded that one of the chiefs of the Swedish forces, Pontus de la
Gardie, sell his personal rings and bracelets. Despite the king's order
to besiege Narva, the Swedish force set off from Tallinn on January 3
and besieged Rakvere. Bad luck befell the Swedes right from the start,
as both the gunner and the quartermaster were killed by a single shot
shortly after the cannons were placed in place. Moreover, it turned out
that the cannons were not in the best condition: their wheels broke
under them. After two storm runs in January failed, the Swedes tried to
dig trenches under the fortress, but the Russians, disgusted by the
situation, built counter-trenches and foiled the plan. The third big
storming took place on March 2, when the artillerymen had succeeded in
breaking one of the towers of the fort. There was a "quite violent
storm" three times, but even after the loss of 1,000 Swedes, Scots and
Germans, the fort still could not be taken. The main blame for the
failure of the storming fell on the Scots, who did not fulfill the tasks
they undertook and withdrew halfway from the attack, allowing the
Russians to beat back the Swedish attack in a bloody manner. On 17
March, what had been an ordinary tavern brawl turned into a furious
battle between Scottish infantry and German horsemen, during which the
Germans killed about 1,500 Scots in one hour, according to Balthasar
Russow, while losing only 30 men themselves. According to Russow, the
massacres started with the actions of the Scots, who seized cannons
after the tavern fight and started firing them at the Germans. The Scots
then in turn attacked the Scots, broke the skirmish line and killed up
to 1,500 Scottish mercenaries. Archibald Ruthven, the chief of the Scots
who tried to separate the warring parties, was also wounded in the
battle. The Scottish mounted banners did not intervene in the battle.
With that, the siege of the fortress had failed, and on March 25, the
Swedish force left for Tallinn.
After the siege of the fortress, mutual war with raids lasted until
1579. After the siege of Tallinn in 1577, Ivo Schenkenberg, the head of
a military detachment consisting of Estonians, emerged from among
others. On July 27, 1579, Schenkenberg's troop ambushed the Tatars who
went on a raid in Harjumaa near the Rakvere fortress. Since the latter
had taken refuge under the protection of the cannons of Rakvere
fortress, he did not want to attack them at first, but he did so after
the accusations and insistence of his brother Christoffer from Keeva.
Balthasar Russow writes about this event in the "Chronicle of
Livonia" as follows: "And when he came near Rakvere and received certain
information that the Tatars were too strong for him, he thought it
better to get into an advantageous position where he could lure the
enemy out into the open. brother Christoffer Schenkenberg consented, but
called his brother Ivo and all the others cowards, and with his foolish
bravery, together with some of the peasants, was the first to dare to
break in. When the others saw this, they went after him, and rushed upon
the Tartars quite splendidly, the two of them rushing entered the
Rakvere gate several times and killed more than fifty of them. The
Russians and Tatars marveled at the great courage of a very small number
and thought nothing but that they must still have a reserve force hidden
somewhere in the grove. But when in the second skirmish they captured
one of Ivo's men, from whom they they got word that there was no reserve
force, then all the Tartars and Russians rushed upon them in great
numbers and surrounded them all. When Ivo saw this, many of his men were
already fleeing. Then Christoffer Schenkenberg would not surrender
himself, but fought mightily on to the death, and Ivo was wounded and
taken prisoner with fifty-nine men. Some of them were hanged in Rakvere
and some were thrown into the dungeon; however, the latter managed to
escape from the dungeon miraculously, quite against reason, and came to
Tallinn after a few weeks. When Ivo Schenkenberg was captured, all the
Russians, both in Livonia and in Russia, had such joy and cheering, as
if they had captured a prince. Soon after that, they took him and thirty
other prisoners to the Grand Duke in Pskov, where Ivo offered to release
the three proud boyars, or nobles, for him. But it didn't help anything,
instead he was miserably executed together with his companions, which
caused great sadness to the people of Tallinn."
In February 1581, the Swedish army led by Pontus de la Gardie
suddenly came across the sea ice from Vyborg to Livonia and surrounded
the Rakvere fortress on February 20. The Russians, who knew that de la
Gardie was in Finland with his forces, considered his appearance under
Rakvere a miracle. The Swedish force consisted of 3,000 to 4,000 men
under the command of sub-chiefs Hermann Fleming, Carl Horn, Arvid Tavast
and Arvid Stålarm. In order to defeat the fortress, on March 1, fiery
bullets were fired from external cannons into the wooden fort. According
to Balthasar Russow: "It set the foothills on fire with great speed, and
the fire took hold so quickly that it could not be extinguished, and
within a single hour such a blaze of flames was lit that was seen behind
14 German penny loads in the twilight of the evening." When the Russians
saw that they could not overcome the fire, they also set fire to the
remaining wooden buildings and retreated to the stone fortress. The
Swedes bombarded it with siege cannons, and then the first voivode of
the fortress, Stepan Fyodorovich Saburov, decided to surrender the
fortress. On March 4, 1581, "more than a thousand men, women and
children left the castle and carried their icons, painted on wooden
boards, openly in front of them and thus entered Russia. When the Swedes
entered the castle, they found a huge supply of all kinds of grain and
abundant military equipment, cannons , gunpowder and tin." Only four
Swedes died under the fortress and some were wounded, Russian losses are
unknown.
Under Swedish rule, the castle became the center of
Rakvere County. The government of the county was led by the chief of the
fortress, next to whom the Rakvere fortress bailiffs also acted at
first. It was not until 1589 that the offices of the castle bailiff and
chieftain were combined, and from then on the Rakvere castle and the
county were managed only by the chieftain.
After the departure of
the Russians, Pontus de la Gardie left 316 foot soldiers and 110
horsemen of the Norwegian flag as a garrison in the fortress. Laurens
Cagnoli and Johann Koskull became the deputy administrators of Rakvere
County, and Halsten Nilsson became the castle bailiff. Since the castle
was badly damaged in the war, it was repaired and modernized. Bastions
were built on the northern, southern and eastern sides of the fortress -
at the ends of the ring wall once built by the Russians. Since it was
not possible to build earth fortifications on the western side of the
fortress, the western wall of the southern forecourt was significantly
thickened. A parade staircase was built on the east side of the west
tower of the convention building, and the south wing was also repaired.
However, Rakvere's castle bailiff probably did not live in the old
convention building, but in a wooden house built in the southern
forecourt.
In 1599, a civil war broke out between the Catholic king of Poland
and Sweden, Sigismund III Waza, and his uncle, the Lutheran viceroy of
Sweden, Duke Karl. In 1600, Northern Estonia and the fortress of Rakvere
fell into the possession of Duke Karl's troops, but already in 1602, the
Poles captured Rakvere again, which the pro-Polish chronicler Dionysius
Fabricius described as follows: "During the same siege [of Paide],
German horsemen who were in military service in our camp came, at night
suddenly under Rakvere or Rakibor, taking with them Velites, whom we
call Cossacks in the vernacular; the Germans speak to those in the fort
in their own language, affirm that they have been sent to help them from
Tallinn, they believe, let ours in, followed by the Cossacks, demanding
that they voluntarily , would leave the fortress without bloodshed;
deceived, they are forced to surrender the fortress against their will."
Around Midsummer 1605, the Swedes under the command of General
Anders Lennartsson recaptured the fortress. Before leaving, the Polish
troops significantly damaged the walls and towers of the fortress.
Finally, the fort was blown up by the victorious Swedes. Since then, we
can talk mainly about the town and manor of Rakvere, because the castle
was in such poor condition that it could no longer be used as a military
stronghold. In 1618, King Gustav II Adolf leased the Rakvere manor
together with 20 arable lands and a water mill to the Dutch ambassador
in Stockholm and the later president of the High Council of the
Netherlands, Zealand and West Friesland, Reinhold von Brederode, who
helped sign the Stolbovo peace treaty with Russia. Reinhold von
Brederode also received the title of Free Lord of Rakvere (Freiherr von
Wesenberg). In 1629, he got the fortress, and in 1631, the town as an
inheritable fiefdom. Before that, the castle had been in the hands of R.
von Brederode under a lease. In 1635, Queen Kristiina of Sweden deleted
the Rakvere fortress from the list of fortifications and it belonged to
the Rakvere manor from now on. On May 25, 1669, the heirs of R. von
Brederodede sold Rakvere, together with all rights, to Estonian Land
Councilor Major General Hans Heinrich von Tiesenhausen, whose rights to
the town and manor were confirmed by King Karl XI on September 14, 1672.
In 1685, the Rakvere manor was reduced, but H.H. von Tiesenhausen
remained the lessee of the manor. For a while, the castle was in
military use at the beginning of the Northern War, when the ammunition
depot of the Swedish army was located there. In the fall of 1700,
Charles XII, who was heading towards Narva with his army, also stopped
at Rakvere manor for a while.
In 1918, under the direction of
Robert Reinwald, the Rakvere rampart was filmed, which was supposed to
represent the ruins of Sigtuna.
The ruins of the castle have been
partially conserved several times.
Since 2002, the SA Virumaa Muuseumid branch has been located in the
fortress. The castle is open as a museum and an interactive experience
center, where a medieval milieu and entertainment and educational
programs have been created for visitors. In the summer period, mercenary
soldiers - landsknechts — operate in the forecourt of the fortress, who
perform the life of a soldier in the 16th century, practice weapons and
line shooting, and occasionally make forays into the lower city. The
mercenaries of the fortress are equipped with pikes, rapiers and muskets
with wick and firelock. Poultry, rabbits and sheep scurry around, and
visitors can ride a horse or donkey. Working workshops: you can mold
clay vessels at the potter and mint coins yourself in the forge.
Visitors can try archery and fight with soft swords.
As a
military stronghold, the fortress has its own artillery, which includes
six cannons of different sizes and powers: a 15th-century Burgundian
Cartaun, nicknamed the Ghost, a late 17th-early 18th-century Swedish
outdoor cannon called the Ööbik, two 17th-century signal cannons and two
bombards . When firing cannons, the garrison of the fort uses black
gunpowder. Since a lot of gunpowder is used, visitors can prepare and
test it under the guidance of a soldier.
Several exhibitions are
also open for viewing, where you can familiarize yourself with the
history of the fortress, the executioner's work, medieval healing
techniques and the history of swords. The premises of the castle are
also rented out for various events. The children's puppet theater Kirev
Kukk has been operating in the castle since 2017, and the Schenkenberg
tavern offers guests dishes prepared according to medieval recipes. Big
events every summer are Circus Day, Knight Otto's birthday, Sword and
Cloak Day and Night of Horrors.