Upytė

History

The name Upytė was first mentioned in 1254 in a Livonian chronicle dealing with the divisions of the Upmala region. Upytė had a wooden castle built on an island which later became a hillfort when Lake Vešeta was drained. The castle was an important northern defence post against numerous incursions of the Livonian Order. Between 1353 and 1379 alone, it repelled ten such attacks. The castle was further expanded and fortified in the 15th century, when it served as the seat of the Starost of Upytė. It is believed that the abandoned castle collapsed in the 17th century after the seat of the starost was moved to Panevėžys. The remnants of the castle survived into the 18th century. Upytė was a capital of the Upytė region () in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The area was later made into an eldership, part of the Principality of Trakai. A document from 1556 states that Panevėžys, along with 57 other towns and 359 villages was part of this eldership. In the 16th century, Upytė began to lose its prominence when the defensive castle became obsolete, and Krekenava became the capital of the Upytė Eldership in 1548. At that time, Panevėžys grew to become a center of economic importance and Upytė became eclipsed by this rival. Nevertheless, Upytė is one of the longest surviving regional capitals from earlier times. The elders of Upytė included Konstanty Ostrogski, Stanislovas Goštautas, Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł and Janusz Radziwiłł. In 1652, one of its elders, a delegate to Warsaw Sejm, Władysław Siciński (Polish name, in Lithuanian known as Čičinskas), allegedly bribed by Janusz Radziwiłł, was the first person to execute his Liberum veto rights in order to disrupt Sejm convention. The Liberum veto was believed to be one of the factors leading to the collapse of Polish-Lithuanian…