Šiauliai

Šiauliai is an old town in northern Lithuania, once a defensive post against the raids of the Teutonic and Livonian orders. After their defeat at Grunwald in 1410, it developed as an agricultural settlement and a regional administrative centre. A wooden church erected in 1445 was replaced by a brick church in 1625, while Magdeburg rights gave the town its own municipal institutions.

War and plague brought devastation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1769 peasants on the Crown estates rose against demands for forced labour, and the revolt was suppressed by Polish and Russian forces. The administrator Antoni Tyzenhaus subsequently undertook reforms and rebuilt Šiauliai on a more orderly plan, replacing its irregular streets with a rectangular grid. In 1791 King Stanisław August confirmed the town's rights and granted it arms bearing the Samogitian bear and the royal family's red bull.