Rahachow

Rahachow stands between the Drut and Dnieper rivers. First mentioned in a Rus' chronicle in 1142, it later formed part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Muscovite forces captured and destroyed the town in 1492. From the sixteenth century it was a royal town in Rechytsa County, within Minsk Voivodeship. Cossack and Russian raids hindered its development in the seventeenth century, but it remained a regional centre of trade and manufacture. The county's local assembly met here temporarily during the reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski. In the first partition of the Commonwealth in 1772, Rahachow passed to the Russian Empire; five years later it became the seat of an administrative district in Mogilev Governorate.