Mstislavl

Mstislavl was a small principality centred on a hill town east of Smolensk, originally an appanage of Smolensk. Its princes belonged to the Mstislavsky line.

In 1377 the townspeople submitted voluntarily to Lithuania, whose first local duke was Karigaila, brother of Jogaila. The town later became a provincial capital in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and received Magdeburg rights in 1634. Russian troops stormed and sacked it in 1654; Polish-Lithuanian forces retook it in 1661, but the First Partition assigned it to Russia in 1772.