Brest Litowsk

Brest stands where the Mukhavets joins the Bug, at a meeting of routes between Poland, Lithuania and the lands of Rus'. First mentioned in 1019 as Berestie, the town passed between rival princes before becoming part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Its position made it an important trading centre and a gathering place for rulers.

Brest received Magdeburg rights in 1390, among the earliest towns in the grand duchy to do so. In 1409 King Władysław Jagiełło and Grand Duke Vytautas met here to prepare for war with the Teutonic Order. A printing house produced the Protestant Brest Bible in Polish in 1563, and three years later the town became the seat of a new voivodeship. In 1596 a council at Brest established a union by which Orthodox bishops acknowledged papal authority while retaining their Eastern rites; the decision also caused a lasting religious division. War brought repeated devastation in the seventeenth century. Swedish armies captured the town in 1657, and Russian troops took its castle in 1660. Brest passed to the Russian Empire in the third partition of Poland in 1795.