Ismail

Izmail stands on the left bank of the Danube's Kilia branch, in the steppe of Budjak where the river runs toward the Black Sea. From the end of the fourteenth century the settlement belonged to Moldavia. In 1484 the Ottomans took it along with nearby Kilia, and from the early sixteenth century it was their main fortress in Budjak, ruled directly after 1538. In 1569 Sultan Selim II settled Nogai tribes from the North Caucasus around it, and in 1609 Cossacks sailed down the Danube and destroyed the fortress.

In the Russo-Turkish wars it became the Ottoman strongpoint on the Danube. After Russian troops took it in 1770, the Turks rebuilt it as a far stronger fortress, which Suvorov stormed on 22 December 1790 after the garrison refused to surrender; thousands of the defenders and townspeople were killed. The peace that ended the war returned it to the Ottomans, and Russian troops took it a third time in 1809. In 1812 it was ceded to Russia, which rebuilt it as a port settled by Bulgarians, Moldavians, Greeks and former Zaporozhian Cossacks.