Principality of Minsk

The Principality of Minsk was an appanage of Polotsk centred on the city of Minsk, in today's Belarus, founded in 1101 and nominally annexed by Lithuania in 1242, falling to it in fact by 1326. It held the basins of the Drut, the Svislach and the Berezina, with Barysaw, Lahojsk, Zaslawye, Orsha and Drutsk beside the capital. After Vseslav of Polotsk died in 1101, his lands were split among his six surviving sons, and his second son Gleb Vseslavich took the Minsk lands and founded the Minsk branch of the Polotsk princes. Gleb at once made war on his brothers Davyd of Polotsk and Roman of Drutsk, raided the Balts in Semigallia in 1106, and in 1116 attacked Vladimir Monomakh of Kiev and sacked Slutsk; Vladimir besieged Minsk for two months until Gleb sued for peace, and when Gleb attacked Smolensk the next year, Vladimir's son Mstislav took Minsk and carried Gleb prisoner to Kiev, where he died in 1119. Minsk then fell under Kiev's influence, with Gleb's widow Yaropolkovna most likely reigning some forty years to 1158, before Lithuania absorbed the land.