Lubny

Lubny rises above the Sula, where a wooden fortress guarded the river in the age of Kyivan Rus'. A battle against the Cumans near the settlement was recorded in 1107. After a long decline, Lubny recovered under the powerful Vyshnevetsky family in the late sixteenth century and became a town with Magdeburg rights.

In 1596 the final battle of Severyn Nalyvaiko's uprising against the Polish authorities took place near Lubny. The town grew during the seventeenth century, before the Khmelnytskyi uprising changed the rule of the region. From 1648 to 1781 Lubny served as the headquarters of a Cossack regiment, making it a centre of military and local administration. Its market and river setting remained important after the regimental system gave way to Russian provincial government.