The text describes the city of Lutsk on the river Styr. The history of this town from as early as 698 is recalled, the times of Bolesław Chrobry's reign there are remembered, since when the town remained with Poland after the end of the war with Russia. The fate of Lutsk during the reign of King Władysław Jagiełło is also described. (Source: Tygodnik Illustrowany, Warsaw 1865, T:11, pp. 124-126., after: Digital Library of the University of Łódź).

A modernised reading of the text

Description of Łuck

Among the number of localities rich in historical monuments, Lutsk undoubtedly belongs. Approaching it, especially from the west, one can see the vast and picturesque landscape of this city, midway between the blue waves of the Styra and Glushce rivers. The history of Lutsk is fairly well known in its main outlines; however, its past deserves to be better and more thoroughly known.

This subject is by all means worthy of a comprehensive and exhaustive work. We, applying to the size of the journal and the scarce sources from which we draw, will repeat the details already known in part, mentioning in turn more outstanding paragraphs in the history of this city. The time of Lutsk's foundation is certainly difficult to pinpoint. The city is located at the mouth of the rivers Styr and Glushce, in the country, in the vicinity of which Konstantin Porphyrogenet in 952 mentions the Lycians or Lucians. 952 mentions the Lyai, or Luczans, in the neighbourhood of the Krivichi (1), who in the first century after Christ were known by Tacitus under the general name of Bolanóir, Polanians, Buleni, Poleni, but in the second century lost their original name (2), "because they were called Lyqia, or Lugians, i.e. Łęczans".

In 1017, Mieczysław's successor, Bolesław Chrobry, took the town and castle. After the end of the war with Russia, the city, together with the Czerwieńskie (Red Ruthenian) towns, remained with Poland. In the following years, Lutsk, together with the land of which it was the most important city, was subject to changing fates, both due to the internal turmoil of the country and to the ensuing transitions with neighbours, passing successively into the possession of one or the other, and then falling under the power of Lithuania, spreading its possessions southwards.

In 1200, the Tartars, plundering Polish lands for the first time, when in their raid they resisted as far as Silesia, sacked Luck. In the first half of the 14th century (1325), "Gediminas, says Bartosz Paprocki, dividing the state between 7 sons during his life, gave Lutsk to Lubart (3)". During Lubart's reign, the brick walls of the upper and lower castle (the last one, where nowadays the Brigidine Monastery is located) were built. In 1349 Casimir the Great took Volhynia, and with it Łuck, but left Lubartow in his possession.

In 1375, King Louis of Hungary established a Catholic bishopric here, and in 1425, Jędrzej Spławski, bishop of this diocese, moved his residence permanently to Lutsk, as during the first 50 years of its existence, the Lutsk bishops had lived in Vladimir. The same Bishop of Slawski founded the Holy Trinity Church here. The year 1429 will be prominent in the history of this city. In this year, Lutsk saw within its walls a large gathering of monarchs and other eminent people of that time. The famous diplomatic congress which was to decide the fate of the Wallachians, the Hussites and the unity of the church took place there, a congress which began with great hopes of the interested parties, but ended in nothing.

When the Emperor Sigismund, after the defeat suffered by the Turks in Bulgaria, "having sent his men down the Danube, fled (1)", proposed to Vytautas and King Ladislaus a convention under the guise of a joint discussion on future means of defence against the threatening Turkish superiority. Vytautas, who was not indifferent to the prospect of receiving the crown on his own, accepted the invitation and designated Lutsk as the place for the convention. At the appointed time (7 January) (2) arrived: Vytautas, King Ladislaus Jagiello with Queen Sophia, Princess of Kyiv, his wife, the Mazovian princes, Emperor Sigismund with his wife Barbara, and the exiled hospodar of Wallachia.

The Teutonic Master Busdorf and the Livonian Syglrydus also hurried in the retinue of their commanders to Lutsk. On the other hand, the eastern neighbours came at Vytautas' request: Vasily the Grand Duke of Moscow, his son-in-law, Boris the Tversian, Olga Duchess of Razan, the Odayovsk knaves of White Russia, and the Tauritic (Perekopsian) and Volga khans. Erik, king of Denmark and Sweden, also came, and Paleologus the emperor sent his envoys.

Assisting each of these crowned persons were a host of dignitaries and high dignitaries. Many dukes of the German Reich, barons and counts were seen, as well as Hungarian, Croatian, Bohemian, Rauckian, Muscovite boyars, lords of the crown and the king's tributes: the dukes of Legnica, Brest and Pomerania. The crowd of guests filled the town and its surrounding villages, for miles around. Witold, the host of the convention, "welcomed the noble guests with great honour, the more he treated and entertained them".

At the opening of the debates, when the parties were reproaching each other for their wrongs and reasons for their resentment, Sigismund the Emperor first put forward a project for the partition of Wallachia and its division into three parts between himself, Vladislav and Vytautas, and then started making efforts to realise the main goal of the congress, namely to make the Lithuanian crown independent in the person of Vytautas. However, both of the emperor's main projects fell apart, and after seven weeks the congress, full of hope in its origins, ended in nothing. Following the sequence of events, we can see that in 1431 Svidrigelo, who broke away from the Polish king's rule and intended to annex Volhynia and Podolia to Lithuania, defends Lutsk from the Poles, who laid siege to it on St Margaret's Day that year. In 1432 the Tartar invasion of Lutsk and its surroundings probably did not go past Lviv.

The same Tatars plundered Podolia and Volhynia again in 1453, but in the same year Theodoric Buczacki's smashing of them in several places saved the deeper regions of Volhynia and the city of Lutsk from a new disaster. In 1452, Svidrigillo, dying, "mindful of his oath, by which he had pledged not to let go of his castle to anyone but Poles (1)," ordered them to let go of Lutsk. Five years after the last mentioned Tartar invasion, i.e. in 1515, the Tartars fell into Lutsk and Olesko, did great damage and deported 1000 prisoners.

In 1517 the Tartars again broke into Lithuania, Volhynia and Wallachia and plundered the whole country around Kamieniec, Zhytomyr, Zhydov and Vladimir (which undoubtedly included Lutsk), sacking 10,000 people. The city must have suffered a great deal when, in the next Tartar incursion in 1517, tens of thousands of people were taken captive in the area. We read about this defeat in Stryjkowski:

"The Tatars of the same year. 1517, in the months of September and October, did great and incalculable damage to the Ruthenian, Volhynian and Podolian lands. For, besides beaten old people and little children, they carried away Christian people fifty and five thousand into slavery, and horses and mares one and a half times a hundred thousand, horned cattle five times a hundred thousand, besides other booty, clothes, gold, silver and treasure, also various domestic ships.".

In the second half of the XV-th century Luck, if necessary, put to defence up to 1000 heads. But after such bloody passages soon the city began to decline. Especially its suburb Vulka was dotted with graves of victims buried there at various times. After 1569, Lutsk became the first provincial town of Volhynia. Also in the middle of the 16th century the Holy Trinity Church, a magnificent temple made of hewn stone, was finished thanks to the efforts of bishop Jerzy Falczewski, and a bishop's house was built. In 1609, Bishop Pawel Wolucki founded a collegiate church here for the Jesuit Fathers who arrived in Lutsk at the end of the 16th century. At the beginning or in the middle of the 17th century, the following monasteries were founded in Lutsk: Bernardines, Trinitarians, Brothers of St John of God, Dominicans, Carmelites, Missionaries, Brigidines and Daughters of Charity.

Of these, only the Brigidine and Daughters of Charity have survived to the present day. Of the city's historical monuments, the most important is its ancient castle, which we will briefly mention here. Its description will partly complete the picture of the city's history. The walls of this castle date back to deep antiquity. J.U. Niemcewicz in his journeys to Luck in 1810 says about them:

"The beautiful castle's perimeter walls with three towers are still standing, the work of Swidrygiello, although by the beauty of the brickwork they could be taken for the work of Casimir the Great." .

Frytze, the author of a war-time statistical description of the Volyn province (1850), who had free access to the local ancient archives, concludes from the architecture of this castle that it could have been built no later than in the 16th century. Going back to more distant times, we can see that as early as 1017 Bolesław Chrobry besieged, and after a siege of several months took, the castle of Łuck, and Kaźmier the Great, while advancing to Russia in 1319, took, among other towns and castles, also "Łucko" (2), leaving it, as we said above, in possession of Lubartów.

It was only quoted by J. U. Niemcewicz cited in his travels, the lustration of this castle in 1533 d. 1-3 June, completed (3), gives us more certain details both as to the time of its foundation and as to the condition of the castle at that time, the walls of which we can see today. It says that "first, the Grand Duke Lubart started to build the two castles". - (the second lower one, where the Brigidine monastery is today), "and after him Prince Svidrigelo finished; however, the wall is unfinished (and)." If the projected castle as a whole did not come to fruition during the reign of Sigismund Augustus, it is always beyond doubt that the great convention described above took place there. In May 1617, Prince Ladislaus, on his way to Moscow, surrounded by lords and dignitaries, including Jędrzej Lipski, Bishop of Łuck, held a review of part of his army in this castle.

In the following years, the castle suffered repeatedly from the Tartars, sharing with the city the miserable fate described above. In 1789, the starost of Lutsk, Duke Jozef Czartoryski, renovated the ruined Witold's rooms, witnesses of the once great congress; but by the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, the castle, together with the town, was in a state of abandonment. Today, after almost four centuries since the castle was founded, we can still think of its former glory when we look at its centuries old and shattered walls, so strongly resisting time. The waters of the Styr and Glushec rivers surrounding it defended its access.

Its main walls, half a fathom wide, crown the face of the high mountain, forming an equilateral triangle, each side of which is 143 cubits long. The southern and eastern sides are slightly rounded by curving their walls outwards. A tower rises in each of its three angles. Three of these towers face south-east, north and west. In the last, a three-storey one, there used to be a gate, serving the entrance from the side of the town and connecting the upper castle with the lower one. The tower itself is very much under strain. Large cracks, reaching from top to bottom, foretell its imminent ruin. At the top, as well as on the south-east tower, the teeth of the ridge still survived.

Apart from this castle, we see in Lutsk many churches abandoned or completely ruined, and many other monuments to the past, crying out for remembrance. The limited framework of our article does not allow us to deal with them. Leaving this for another time, however, we cannot omit the ruins of the Uniate Church of the Elevation of the Holy Cross, notable for its original Greek-style construction. Its ruined walls still show the high architectural knowledge and refined taste of the builder.

These ruins stand between the new and old towns, on the banks of the Głuszec river, near its confluence with the Styr river. The attached drawing shows its present state. Built in the form of an elongated quadrangle, with a semi-circular display at the front, it was 113 feet long and 73 wide. The main dome consisted of two storeys. The lower one square with windows, the upper one circular with 8 windows. The upper dome and part of the lower dome have survived to the present day and only collapsed in 1830.

Coming back to the fate of the city, we can see that the condition of Lutsk was already sad by the end of the 18th century. Around 1783, J. U. Niemcewicz, who visited the town, did not find it "splendid". Niemcewicz, who visited it around 1783, did not find "its splendour striking, but at least the Lord's temples were intact"; but when he visited it again in 1816: "fires had brought it to ruin. Apart from the cathedral, transferred to the ex-Jesuits after the fire of 1781, almost all the churches were destroyed.".

Today even more ruins and abandonment have come to Lutsk, especially after the last great fire. Of the once splendid population, a total of 2603 heads remained at the time of the 1816 search, and four years ago (1860) the number of inhabitants was 6362 people of both sexes, of whom ¾ were only Old Believers and among this number a handful of Karaites, famous for their honesty. In 1811, the main military hospital was established near the town. There were also a few modest houses for local officials.

Today, a wanderer approaching from Vladimir will see the city standing silently in the blue Volhynian sky with its blackened, frayed walls, among which the magnificent Lutsk Cathedral rises majestically. In concluding this reminiscence, we should express our thanks to Mr Aleksander Leszczyński, who willingly provided the attached views of Lutsk from his portfolio for the present use.