Braslav Castle: A Historic Fortress in Belarus
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.9
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Belarus
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page9 sections
History
Braslav Castle was a wooden fortress in Braslav, Belarus, occupying Castle Hill from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Its fortifications probably developed with the establishment of Braslav, although archaeological settlement layers on the hill are older than the castle mentioned in written records. The site stood between Lakes Drivyaty and Novyaty and served both as a defensive stronghold and as an administrative centre.
Origins and the sixteenth century
The castle first appears in written history in 1514, when Sigismund I the Old, king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania, confirmed Braslav’s limited Magdeburg law. This medieval urban legal system gave a town a degree of self-government and regulated its administration, courts, and markets. The privilege had originally been granted in 1500 by Alexander, grand duke of Lithuania and king of Poland.
Russian forces attacked Braslav in either 1513 or 1515 under the voivodes Kutuzov-Shchuka, Buturin, and Vorontsov. A voivode was a senior provincial governor and military official in the Polish-Lithuanian political system. The settlement was destroyed, but the castle resisted capture. In 1520, the Mosalski princes purchased the castle and town from the Sapieha family.
The fortress was devastated in either 1550 or 1551 by forces of Davlet I Giray, khan of the Crimean Khanate, a Crimean Tatar state that often campaigned in Eastern Europe. The government financed reconstruction in 1552. Sigismund II Augustus ordered Nikolai Radziwill, the Vilna voivode, to supervise the work and restore the castle quickly. He also asked Konstanty Ostrogski, Marshal of Volhynia, to defend the fortress with troops, while the gunner Valko was appointed to oversee reconstruction.
A garrison occupied Braslav Castle during the Livonian War, a sixteenth-century conflict over control of Livonia in the eastern Baltic region. The fortress did not take part in military operations during that war. Stephen Bathory, king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania, stayed there in 1578. The castle also retained administrative importance, since district institutions and courts operated within its grounds during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Seventeenth-century administration and war
Braslav Castle was shown as a substantial fortress on a height in Tomasz Makowski’s Radziwill Map, published in 1613. In 1631, Janusz Skumin-Tyszkiewicz, voivode of Trakai, financed the construction of St Nicholas Church within the castle grounds.
The fortress was repeatedly affected by the Russo-Polish War of 1654 to 1667, a major conflict between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Russian forces commanded by Vasily Sheremetev captured the castle in 1654, and Swedish troops occupied the town and fortress in 1655. The damage was severe. A resolution of the Sejm, the legislative assembly of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, described Braslav District as completely destroyed in 1661 and exempted it from taxation for four years.
Decline and archaeological investigation
The castle suffered further substantial damage during the Great Northern War of 1700 to 1721, another major conflict that affected the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Its last recorded military use came in 1765, when a garrison of 14 soldiers and one officer occupied it. The ruins still existed at least at the end of the eighteenth century.
F. P. Pokrovsky, an employee of the Vilna Museum of Antiquities, described the remains as an archaeological monument in the late nineteenth century. Detailed excavations followed in 1955 and 1956 under the direction of the Moscow archaeologist Leonid Alekseev, who published a report. Belarusian researchers M. A. Tkachev, G. M. Semenchuk, and K. S. Shidlovsky investigated the hill in 1989, 1990, and 1994. Braslav Castle is now designated a historical and cultural value of the Republic of Belarus.
Remains
Braslav Castle occupied the natural elevation known as Castle Hill, which rises approximately 14 metres between Lakes Drivyaty and Novyaty. The surviving fortified archaeological site consists of a platform about 100 by 200 metres in area, enclosed by earthen ramparts that reach up to 4 metres high. The earthworks preserve the basic defensive setting of the settlement, while excavated layers reveal occupation extending well beyond the period of the wooden fortress.
Early settlement and earthworks
Excavations in 1955 and 1956 identified a lower cultural horizon first dated to the ninth or tenth century. Later investigations in 1989 and 1990 placed this phase between the third quarter of the first millennium and the beginning of the ninth century. Large quantities of coarse pottery belong to this early occupation. A thick charcoal layer shows that the settlement was burned during the first half of the eleventh century, after which further cultural deposits accumulated above the destruction level.
The site has also produced numerous domestic and military objects from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, including body-worn crosses. These finds reflect the continued use of the fortified hill before the wooden castle described in sixteenth-century records. The present physical form of the site is defined by the fortified settlement and its earthen ramparts.
Upper castle
An inventory from 1649 describes the upper castle, the principal fortified section of the complex, as having seven towers and wooden walls. Its entrance tower contained double gates and two machicolations, which were projecting defensive structures with openings through which defenders could drop stones or other materials on attackers below. The recorded armament comprised five bronze cannons, two iron cannons, and 40 hand firearms, early guns used by infantry and fortress garrisons.
St Nicholas Church
St Nicholas Church was built within the castle grounds in 1631 with financial support from Janusz Skumin-Tyszkiewicz. Its construction formed part of the seventeenth-century development of the fortified complex, when the hill served not only as a military site but also as a location for district administration and courts.
Memorials on Castle Hill
A granite boulder bearing a bronze plaque commemorates the foundation of Braslav. The hill also contains the grave of Stanislaw Narbut, a physician and scholar who lived in the town during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His burial is marked by a massive obelisk topped with a lantern.
