Bartoszyce

Bartoszyce (pronounced Barto-shitse [bartɔˈʂɨt͡sɛ] ^ⓘ; German: Bartenstein, [ˈbaʁtn̩ʃtaɪn] ^ⓘ) is a town on the Łyna River in northern Poland, with 22,597 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is the capital of Bartoszyce County within the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship.

Bartoszyce lies on the left shore of river Łyna River in a valley, approximately 90 kilometres (56 miles) east of Elbląg and 55 kilometres (34 miles) south of Kaliningrad, at an altitude of 3 metres (9.8 feet) above sea level.

Around 1241 the Teutonic Knights constructed a castle on the left shore of the Łyna River on the border between the Old Prussian regions of Natangia and Bartia. The castle was part of the district (Komturei) of Balga. It was first composed of stone houses, palisades, and earthworks and later built of bricks.

Besieged by the native Old Prussians for four years during an uprising beginning in 1260, the castle was destroyed in 1264. The Order rebuilt it shortly afterward, but it was besieged by another Baltic group, the Sudovians, in 1273. After the Old Prussian uprisings ended, the Knights rebuilt the Ordensburg out of stone from 1274–80. During the 14th and 15th centuries, the castle was managed by the Komtur (administrator) of Balga.

Thereafter, a settlement developed near the castle on the right shore of the Alle River opposite the castle. First documented in 1326 under the name Rosenthal, it received town privileges from the Teutonic Grand Master Luther von Braunschweig in 1332.^{[citation needed]} After that the name was changed to Bartenstein and the settlement of Rosenthal below the castle on the left shore of the river was relocated, as the left side had become too endangered by warfare. Poles settled in sizeable numbers in Bartenstein from the 14th to the 17th century. The town's Polish residents used the Polish names Bartoszyce and Barsztyn. The town's Teutonic Order administrator (German: Komtur), Henning Schindekopf of Balga, began construction of a wall around the town in 1353.

In 1440, the town joined the anti-Teutonic Prussian Confederation, upon the request of which Polish King Casimir IV Jagiellon incorporated the region and town to the Kingdom of Poland in 1454. At the beginning of the subsequent Thirteen Years' War, the Teutonic castle was destroyed and was not rebuilt afterward. However, the residents of Bartenstein became reconciled with the Teutonic Knights in 1460. After the peace treaty signed in Toruń in 1466, the town became part of Poland as a fief held by the State of the Teutonic Order. To stabilize the Order's financial situation, the Order sold the ruined castle's farmyard and meadows to Wend von Eulenburg in 1469; the entire manor of Bartenstein was sold in 1513 to Heinrich Reuß von Plauen (not the Grand Master).

With the secularization of the Teutonic Order's Prussian territories in 1525, the town became part of the Duchy of Prussia, established with the consent of the Polish king Sigismund I the Old, as a vassal state of the Polish Crown. The town converted to Protestantism in the same year during the Protestant Reformation.

Bartenstein became part of the secular Kingdom of Prussia in 1701 and the Prussian Province of East Prussia in 1773. During the Napoleonic Wars, Prussia and the Russian Empire signed a treaty of alliance in the town on 26 April 1807, the Treaty of Bartenstein. Administrative reform following the Napoleonic Wars placed Bartenstein within East Prussia's Landkreis Friedland in 1818. The town was subjected to Germanisation policies, and although the post of a Polish preacher still existed in 1829, the appointed preacher did not speak Polish.