Dés

	DÉS (Dej, Rumania today) is an old salt mining town. Its mines were established by Hungarian king Andás II (1205-1235), and soon he raised Dés to the privileged status of a free royal town. The mines were exhausted by 1717 and the production was stopped. The population of Dés used to be the Saxons, who were settled here from Germany, but during the centuries they assimilated into the Hungarians. Dés, like many other towns in Transylvania, suffered many times during history. Basta, the merciless Habsburg military commander, killed most of the population of the town in 1602. In 1638, in Dés was staged the huge show trial against the members of the Sabbath (Hung. Szombatosok), a sect formed during the Protestant movement, during which they were sentenced to death with full confiscation of property. The sentencing was in Beszterce. In 1717, an attack by the Tartars of Crimea struck Dés. The originally Catholic, now Reformed (i.e., Presbyterian), church was built in the second half of the 15th century. The church has nice gothic elements carved in stone. The tower is 72-meter-high and the fortifying walls were erected in the 16th century, which were sadly torn down during a renovation in the 1880's. In Dés the Franciscan order had a monastery and they style can be recognized in the long and narrow apse of the church.