Kaunas

Kaunas rose at the meeting of the Nemunas and the Neris, where the Grand Duchy of Lithuania faced the Teutonic Order along its main river frontier. Its brick castle, one of only two on the Nemunas, was besieged for weeks and destroyed by the Order in 1362; most of its 400 defenders died, and their commander Vaidotas was captured. The Knights then built Gotteswerder on the island of Virgalė in 1369, and the struggle over the river mouth lasted until the Lithuanians won it for good in 1404.

Grand Duke Vytautas gave thanks for surviving the rout on the Vorskla in 1399 by building the Church of the Virgin Mary, finished in 1400. In 1408 he gave the town Magdeburg rights, and Kaunas became the centre of its district in 1413. It held the town scales, the wax-processing house and the cloth-trimming workshops. As a river port at the junction of trade routes, it joined the Hanseatic League in 1441 and housed the league's only office in the Grand Duchy. After Grunwald the castle lost its military role. Late in the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century Kaunas was at its richest and built many brick houses, and part of a town wall. Plague in 1657 and 1708, Swedish occupation in 1701 and fires in 1731–32 then hurt it. Russia took the town in 1795, and Napoleon's army ravaged it twice in 1812.