Kobyl'e

Kobyl'e, now Kobyl'e Gorodishche, stood on the eastern shore of Lake Peipus near the mouth of the Zhelcha. Fishing grounds here were disputed between Pskov and the Livonian Order. An agreement in 1461 assigned each side fishing rights by its own shore, but the frontier remained contested. In 1462 the Pskov assembly ordered a wooden fortress to be built, together with a stone church dedicated to the Archangel Michael.

The lake settlement remained a military refuge during the Livonian War. In 1581 part of the Russian garrison from Dorpat withdrew to Kobyl'e Gorodishche. By 1585–1587 it contained a governor's court and served as the centre of a district comprising five guby, or local administrative divisions. The surviving fifteenth-century church recalls the fortified settlement, whose history was shaped by fishing rights, lake-front defenses and the movement of troops along Pskov's western approaches.