Starodub

Starodub stands on the Babinets in the old Severian lands, its name meaning Old Oak. Known from the eleventh century as a town of the Chernihiv principality, it was rebuilt under Lithuanian rule as a frontier stronghold. Its position exposed it to repeated wars between Lithuania, Poland and Moscow.

The town passed to Moscow in 1503, was captured by Polish-Lithuanian forces in 1535, and changed hands again during the wars of the early seventeenth century. Cossacks seized Starodub in 1648 during Bohdan Khmelnytsky's uprising; the Jewish population suffered a pogrom. After further devastation by Tatars in 1660 and Polish forces in 1663, Starodub became the centre of a separate Cossack regiment. Its colonels administered a wide territory of company towns, including Mglin and Pogar. The regiment remained part of the Hetmanate until the regimental system was abolished in the 1780s.