Kopys

Kopys stood on the left bank of the Dnieper where the Smorkovka entered the river. It came under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the later fourteenth century and later belonged to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The castle remained an important feature of the settlement through the early modern period. An inventory of 1726 described four bastions, wooden walls and an entrance tower, showing the form of its defences before Russian annexation.

War repeatedly changed control of the town. Muscovite troops occupied Kopys in 1654; Lithuanian forces recovered it early the following year. Russian troops partly burned the settlement in 1659, and in 1660 its inhabitants admitted Commonwealth forces. The first partition of the Commonwealth transferred Kopys to the Russian Empire in 1772. The castle was not rebuilt afterward. New administrative arrangements followed: the town received a regular plan in 1778 and a coat of arms in 1781, while a public school opened in 1789. Riverbank fortification thus gave way to the institutions of an imperial district town.