Principality of Drutsk

The Principality of Drutsk was a small appanage of the Principality of Polotsk, centred on the town of Drutsk on the Drut River in what is now eastern Belarus. It was created in 1101, after the death of Vseslav of Polotsk, when his sons divided the Polotsk lands and Drutsk passed to Rogvolod-Boris. The principality was contested by neighbouring appanages: it was taken by Kiev under Vladimir Monomakh in 1116, returned to the Principality of Minsk by the 1150s, and absorbed by Minsk in the second half of the thirteenth century before passing to Vitebsk. Its princes belonged to a cadet branch of the Polotsk dynasty. Through the marriage of Grand Duke Algirdas to Maria of Vitebsk it entered the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where it survived as an autonomous principality until the administrative reform of 1565–1566 incorporated it into Orsha County. Its capital was Drutsk, a fortified town on the river of the same name.