Piotrków

Piotrków, in central Poland, became an important meeting place for the kingdom's nobility and clergy. General assemblies and parliamentary sessions gathered here, and the town is associated with the development of Poland's two-chamber parliament in the late fifteenth century. In 1578 it became one of the two seats of the Crown Tribunal, the highest court for the nobility; the other was Lublin. The tribunal heard cases from Greater Poland at Piotrków, drawing litigants, deputies and their attendants to the town. Its long presence gave rise to the later name Piotrków Trybunalski. Swedish troops occupied the town during the wars of 1655 and 1657, and again in 1702. After the second partition of Poland in 1793, Piotrków passed to Prussia. It entered the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807 and the Kingdom of Poland in 1815.