Krichev Castle: A Medieval Hillfort and Frontier Stronghold in Belarus

Site at a Glance

Rating

★4.6

Popularity

Low

Country

Belarus

Primary era

Medieval

External website

Open ↗

Eras represented

Medieval, Early Modern

Civilizations

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

Site type

Military

Remains

Castle

History

Origins and medieval rule

Krichev Castle is a medieval fortified settlement in Belarus, at Krychaw on the right bank of the Sozh River where the Krichevka River reaches it. It developed in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century on the site of an unfortified settlement that had existed from the eleventh to the early twelfth century. The hillfort became the center of Krichev and retained that role until the end of the eighteenth century.

The earlier settlement, known as Krechut, belonged to the Principality of Smolensk and was first mentioned in 1136 in a charter issued by Rostislav Mstislavich, Prince of Smolensk. In 1359, Krichev and the other towns of the Principality of Mstislavl entered the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a medieval and early-modern state that included much of present-day Belarus and Lithuania.

A contested frontier

After the late-fifteenth-century Russo-Lithuanian wars, the frontier between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Russian state ran close to Krichev. The town and its castle consequently became repeated targets of military operations. Recorded sieges and attacks took place in 1507, 1508, 1514, 1535, 1633, 1648, 1651, 1654, 1658, and 1661. The castle was besieged three times in 1633.

In autumn 1507, forces commanded by Vasily III, the Grand Prince of Moscow, besieged the castles of Krichev and Mstislavl. They withdrew after Sigismund I, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, sent military relief. Russian forces briefly occupied Krichev in 1514, leaving after the Battle of Orsha. During the January campaign of 1535, Moscow forces burned both Krichev and its castle.

Wooden defensive structures were also burned at some point between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, although the reason remains unknown. During the anti-feudal war of 1648 to 1654, the castle withstood Cossack and peasant sieges in 1648 and 1651. Its defense was organized by Nikolai Stefan Pac, the Krichev starosta, a royal or grand-ducal administrator of a territorial district. Pac spent 20,000 zlotys of his own money on the restoration of the castle.

War, surrender, and rebuilding

The Russo-Polish War of 1654 to 1667 brought further attacks by Russian forces. Krichev’s garrison resisted for a prolonged period but eventually surrendered after hunger began in the town and news arrived that other regional strongholds had fallen. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich confirmed the rights, property, and privileges of Krichev’s nobles and townspeople, but Russian troops expelled the inhabitants from the castle. Two months later, a Cossack detachment under Zolotarenko, to whom the tsar had granted Krichev, burned the castle and all its contents.

Krichev began to recover after the war. In March 1664, King Jan Kazimierz was satisfied with the condition of its fortifications. Written inventories survive from 1673 onward and provide a record of the castle’s buildings and changing arrangement. In 1696, an uprising of townspeople and peasants against abuses by the starostwo administration, the governing office of the district, resulted in the capture of the castle and its guns. The weapons were then used against the troops of Grigory Oginsky’s banner, a military unit organized under its own commander or standard.

Destruction and eighteenth-century change

The Great Northern War of 1700 to 1721, a conflict in which Sweden fought a coalition including Russia for influence in the Baltic region, caused extensive destruction at Krichev, particularly during the campaigns of 1708 and 1709. In 1709, only the church and prison were recorded as surviving. Later inventories show that repairs and new construction followed. By 1720, the castle included the church, an arsenal, several repaired buildings, and a new kitchen. In 1727, inventories listed a new two-story governor’s building and a separate two-story grain store.

In 1731, Hieronim Radziwill leased the Krichev starostwo to his treasurer, Gdalya Itsikovich. Excessive taxation under this arrangement provoked a peasant uprising. Radziwill’s forces occupied the castle on 15 January 1744. Three days later, rebels led by Vasily Vashchila, joined by townspeople, shelled and assaulted the castle, but they were defeated and expelled. The complex had been sufficiently restored or reorganized by that time to withstand the attack.

Later inventories record further alterations. The governor’s residence was one story by 1747, and a stable was moved from the town into the castle in 1756. The First Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, which divided the state among neighboring powers, placed Krichev within the Russian Empire. The castle was no longer a Lithuanian frontier stronghold facing the Russian state and gradually lost its military purpose. Russian military topographers still recorded a small palisaded castle in 1778 and 1780, when its ditch was nearly filled. After the 1780s, the fortifications disappeared from the records.

Archaeological investigation

The castle itself has not survived as a standing structure, but the hillfort remains in relatively good condition. Archaeological investigations in 1974 and 1976 established the survival of twelfth- and thirteenth-century building remains along the southern side of the hillfort. Excavations in 1988 uncovered the old well. In 2015, archaeologist Igor Marzalyuk tentatively identified ruined structures in the northeastern part as an eighteenth-century icehouse, although their function requires further investigation.

Remains

Hillfort and defenses

Krichev Castle occupied a rounded hillfort of about 0.5 hectares on a riverside plateau above the Sozh River. The earlier unfortified settlement, or posad, lay southeast of the hillfort on Spasskaya Hill. A posad was the settlement outside the fortified central enclosure of a medieval East Slavic town, where merchants, artisans, and other residents commonly lived.

On the landward side, the hillfort retains traces of a defensive rampart and ditch. The rampart was raised by 3.5 meters during the thirteenth century. The fortification consisted of five towers, including a gate tower, and its walls were made from two-tier timber construction formed by enclosed log compartments. The entrance was described as the castle’s only way in and out.

Buildings within the enclosure

Church and bell tower

The courtyard contained a wooden Church of Saint Nicholas with a bell tower beside it. The church stood to the left of the entrance in the 1682 inventory, which also lists it among the newer buildings. The church and its bell tower remain among the structures on the hilltop today.

Residences, stores, and military buildings

The castle courtyard also held the governor’s residence, storerooms, stables, cellars, servants’ dwellings, a prison, a kitchen, a grain store, and an arms store for gunpowder, ammunition, and weapons. Inventories provide snapshots of the complex’s changing buildings. A two-story building was listed in 1673; the arms store appeared among the newer structures in 1682; and a marksmen’s building and prison were recorded in 1694. The same 1694 inventory mentions the church’s bell tower and the old castle well.

The hilltop now contains the Church of Saint Nicholas, several residential buildings and outbuildings, a bell tower, and unidentified fortification remains in the northeastern area. A possible eighteenth-century icehouse has been described as a food-storage room, but that identification remains tentative.

Archaeological layers and finds

Early settlement remains

The southern side of the hillfort contains twelfth- and thirteenth-century cultural layers with building remains arranged along the line of the rampart. The heavily disturbed deposits include material associated with the Milograd culture, an Iron Age archaeological culture chiefly linked with areas of present-day Belarus and northern Ukraine, as well as remains from the medieval East Slavic period.

Burned house and excavated objects

Archaeological finds from the hillfort include medieval pottery, weapons, and household objects. They also include the remains of a burned thirteenth-century house, while the old castle well was uncovered in 1988. Together with the surviving earthworks and later structures, these remains preserve evidence of the settlement’s long occupation after the castle’s wooden fortifications disappeared.