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Gorodets was known as Volzhskyi
Gorodets in the Middle Ages. It was a frontier outpost in the XIIth century for
the Suzdal principality against the Bulgars. In 1171 Great Prince Andrei
Bogolyubskiy sent a military expedition headed by Prince Mstislav Andreevich
and the voevoda of Andrei, Boris Zhidislavich to explore the Oka and Volga
rivers. Following the sudden demise of Andrei Bogolyubskiy, (murdered by his
boyars) his brother, prince Mikhail assumed the mantle of great prince and
executed the murderer of his brother, the Kuchko. Prince Mikhail rode out to
this region and arrived in Gorodets a sick man and died here in 1176. In 1186,
the voevod of Great Prince Vsevolod III rode with the Gorodets citizens against
the Bulgars, to the mouth of the Kama river, sacked many villages and returned
to Gorodets with many captives.
Later, in 1216, Gorodets served as a refuge for prince Yuri Vsevolodovich after
he had lost out to his brother Constantine, and was forced to give up to him
the mantle of great prince and make do till Constantine's death, with the
Gorodets udel. When prince Yuri finally became great prince, Gorodets served as
an assembly point for warriors gathered to campaign against Great Bulgar. These
troops under the command of his brother, Prince Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich
Yur'skyi, ran down the river flow of the Volga beyond the mouth of the Kama,
sacked the city of Oshel' and returned by river to Gorodets, and then rode to
Vladimir. These were the first successful campaigns of princes of the
North-east Rus' to gradually grab-up territory the entire course of the Volga,
which unfortunately was stopped by a terrible storm approaching from the east.
In 1238, Gorodets was one of fourteen cities of the area herein described which
was completely devastated by the Tatar hordes of Batyi. On 14 November, 1263,
in Gorodets, Great Prince Alexander Nevskyi died on the return trip from the
Horde, having as the chronicle recounts worked hard for Novgorod and the entire
Rus' land. After his death, Gorodets was an independent udel of his second son,
Prince Andrei Alexandrovich, who came to be known as Andrei Gorodetskyi. In
1281 this prince of Gorodets, began a fight with his brother Dmitri
Alexandrovich for the mantel of great prince, on the council of the Kostroma
boyar, Semyon Toniglyevich, having gone over to the side of Prince Andrei from
the moment of the death of Great Prince Vasilii Yaroslavich. The Kostroma udel
of the latter was turned over to Andrei in 1276. A internecine war between the
two brothers, brought calamity to this region, aided by the Horde Tatars and
the Nogai Tatars, who took opposing sides. After the convulsions of the bloody
subterfuge, prince Andrei Gorodetskyi gained the mantle and ended his days as
great prince. Following his death, Gorodets fell under the domain of the Suzdal
princes, namely first to prince Mikail Andreevich and then to the son of
Mikhail, Vasilii, and then to the grandson, Constantine, prince of Suzdal.
On the death of Prince Constantine in 1354, a war erupted amongst his sons, and
one of them, Dmitrii Constantinovich took Nizhni, Gorodets went to his brother,
Prince Boris (son-in- law of Ol'gerd of Lithuania). Boris Constantinovich
remain in Gorodets till the death of his brother Dmitrii, not attempting to
claim the mantle in Nizhni. His attempt in any case failed and he even lost
Gorodets and was captured by Prince Vasilii Dmitriyevich, and died in captivity
in 1399. His cousins, the sons of the Nizhegorod Prince Dmitrii Cosntantinovich
and Dmitrii Donskoi's brothers-in-law, Semyon and Vasilii, tried for a long
time unsuccessfully to gain a votchina, even breaking treacherously away during
Toktamysh's raid on Moscow. Despite all of this, Vasilii Dmitriyevich mended
fences with his uncle (on his mother's side), prince Vasili, and gave him
Gorodets where the latter died in 1403, the last of the Gorodets princes.
During the course of the XVth and XVIth centuries, Gorodets is recalled only in
the wills of the Moscow princes and Tsars. In 1608, Gorodets along with seven
other Russian cities rebelled against the imposter of Tushin (false Dmitri). No
ruins remain in the city other than an earthen rampart.
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