Masalsk

Masalsk, later called Mosalsk, guarded routes across the watershed between the Oka and Desna. Its fortified site became the centre of a small principality descended from the Chernigov and Karachev rulers. The town stood among the upper Oka possessions for which Lithuania and Moscow competed.

In the late fourteenth century Mosalsk became the seat of its own princes, whose inheritance was divided among branches of the family. Moscow’s forces occupied the town in 1492, but the peace of 1494 returned it to Lithuania. In 1500 Muscovite troops took it again and the Mosalsk princes entered Ivan III’s service with their lands; the truce of 1503 confirmed the change. The town suffered in the Time of Troubles, when its inhabitants joined Bolotnikov’s uprising in 1606. Its history reflects the changing loyalties and contested borders of the upper Oka.