Lyakhavichy

Lyakhavichy was known in the fifteenth century as the centre of a district in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1572 Sigismund Augustus transferred the town to Jan Hieronimowicz Chodkiewicz; his son Jan Karol replaced an older wooden castle with a bastioned stone fortress. The town and castle passed to the Sapieha family in 1635. During the Russo-Polish War, Russian troops burned the town in 1655, but a siege of the fortress failed in 1660. Swedish forces took the castle after a siege in 1706 during the Great Northern War and partly destroyed it. In 1793, the Second Partition of Poland brought Lyakhavichy under Russian rule. The town's history reflects the changing fortunes of a fortified magnate seat amid the wars and partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.