Population – under 4,000
Artisans - 335
Clergy – 50
Nobles - 36
Merchants - 9
Houses - 500
At the beginning of the 19th century the town was home to a fabric factory and other light industry manufactures, as well as a distillery and a creamery.
In 1812, on the tenth day of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, Brest found itself in the thick of fierce battles. The town was defended by the Third Reserve Army of Observation led by Alexander Tormasov. On 13 July 1812, the Russian cavalry under the command of Prince Shcherbatov and a detachment of General Lomberg broke into Brest and smashed two squadrons of the enemy, capturing 40 Saxons. The town changed hands several times. In December 1812, the French troops finally left the ‘inhospitable’ Brest.
After the enemy was pushed back, rear military units from Russia arrived in the town. At this time Brest-Litovsk hosted Alexander Griboyedov, a famous Russian playwright, poet, musician and diplomat.
At that time, most of the townspeople earned their living by cultivating the land. The town lived a measured provincial life, which was occasionally interrupted by fires that destroyed a significant part of the wooden structures that prevailed in the town.
The commissioning of the Brest-Warsaw highway in 1828 gave a significant boost to trade.
The construction of a fortress began in the territory of Brest-Litovsk in 1833. This had far-reaching consequences for the town.
Brest-Litovsk was relocated from where it stood,i.e. the area at the confluence of the Mukhavets River and the Western Bug River, two kilometers to the east, and residents were given a loan to build new homes.
1835
Beautiful buildings of the old town were destroyed or adapted for military purposes. The Engineering Department was stationed in the Augustinian Monastery. The Monastery of the Trinitarians housed a labor corpse, St. Brigid Convent was used as a prison, the Jesuit Collegium complex was rebuilt to host the Commandant’s Office in 1836, the Basilian Monastery was re-purposed into artillery barracks, the Peter and Paul Uniate Church was converted into the Officers’ Assembly, the so-called White Palace.
The Dominican Church was upgraded into a cathedral church to be demolished in 1848. The monasteries and convents of the Bernardines were redesigned in line with the project of architect Mordvinov. They housed the Alexander Cadet Corps with a church painted by famous artist V. Bazhenov. After the corps was transferred to Moscow in 1854, the building was used as a military hospital.
The parish church, the St. Trinity Church, the St. Michael Church, the Savior Church of the Uniates were demolished. Five years after the construction of the fortress, the old town was razed to the ground and ceased to exist.
Fortress construction
At the end of the 18th century the tsarist government decided to build a fortress on the site of Brest-Litovsk in order to strengthen Russia’s western frontiers. This fortress was supposed to become one of nine citadels to be erected on the western border of the Russian Empire.
In 1797, military engineer General Franz Devolan came up with the first project to build a fortress on the site of the old town. Ten years later, military engineer General van Suchtelen again suggested Brest-Litovsk as the site to build a fortress, but Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 thwarted this plan.
In 1830, Emperor Nicholas I approved the fortress design developed by military engineers General Karl Oppermann, General N.M. Maletsky and Colonel Alexander Feldmann. A construction committee headed by N.M. Maletsky was put together. The general supervision of the construction project was exercised by the head of the Western Military District, Major General of Engineering Troops Johan Jakob von Daehn. The earthworks were suspended in 1831 due to the uprising in Poland.
In 1832, the supreme oversight of the construction works was entrusted with Count Ivan Fyodorovich Paskevich-Erevansky, Serene Prince of Warsaw, Count of Yerevan, Namiestnik of the Kingdom of Poland. The funding of the project was resumed and on 6 June 1833 massive earthworks were re-started in the fortress after a year’s break caused by a fire that destroyed most of Brest-Litovsk.
On 1 June 1836, defensive barracks were solemnly laid in the Citadel on the central island of the fortress. In line with an old tradition, a bronze plaque in honor of Emperor of Russia Nicholas I and a box with 21 coins, including a platinum three-ruble note, two gold, thirteen silver and several copper coins, were immured in the foundation of the future barracks.
On 26 April 1842 the tricolor flag of the Russian Empire was hoisted over the first-class fortress. This meant that the powerful fortification - the Brest-Litovsk Fortress - was put into operation.
The total area of the fortress was four square kilometers. The arms of the Mukhavets River and the Western Bug River and bypass channels divided it into four islands. The Citadel was the central and the most protected part of the fortress. Its closed two-level defensive barracks in the form of a polygon 1.8 km long with outer walls almost two meters thick encircled the central island and had more than 500 casemates invulnerable to artillery. The Arsenal, the Engineering Department, the White Palace, and the Garrison Church were located in the courtyard of the Citadel.
Four gates with bridges connected the Citadel with the Terespol, Kobrin and Volyn bridgeheads, surrounded by bypass channels and a ten-meter-high defensive rampart. Their outer part exceeded 6.4 km. Stone casemates were hidden inside the thick ramparts. A total of 21 bridges connected the suburbs of the town with the fortress.
Brest-Litovsk Fortress was a remarkable military engineering structure and an interesting architectural complex. In 1840, by order of Count Ivan Paskevich, the Polish artist, Academician Marcin Zaleski captured the construction and initial appearance of Brest-Litovsk Fortress in his paintings.
Due to the lack of funding, the construction of the fortress was on hold from 1848 to 1862. By this time, it no longer met the standards of a first-class fortress. As weapons became more sophisticated and the artillery shell range and penetrability increased, the fortress became utterly vulnerable as artillery shells could reach every corner of the fortress. Thus, in 1864 at the suggestion of military engineer and Russian Army general Eduard Totleben, the work began to thicken the main rampart and to build additional fortifications.
In 1878, a belt of nine fortifications-forts was built around the fortress. These forts were placed 3-4 km from each other and 3-5 km from the fortress fence. The decision to further strengthen the fortress was made in 1909. The next renovation stage was planned to be launched in 1921. A new belt of 14 forts and 21 strongholds was supposed to be erected 6-7 km from the heartland of the fortress. Construction works to reinforce the fortress continued until the summer of 1914. During the First World War the fortress was barely involved in the hostilities.
New town
In 1835, a new town began to be built two kilometers east of the fortress. The construction was launched in the territory of the Volyn, Kobrin and Zabug suburbs.
The Kobrin suburb, located northeast of the fortress on the high bank of the Mukhavets River, became the center of the new town. It was the most convenient place for construction it was not flooded during the high water season.
The new town differed from the old one in many respects. The layout of the old town was based on a radial concentric plan, which meant that the streets extended outward from the central square. The plan for the new town provided for straight streets dividing it into small rectangular and trapezoidal quarters. Shosseynaya Street (now Masherova Avenue) became the main thoroughfare of the new town.
The town planning was modeled on the most advanced urban development projects. Since 1846 plans and facades of houses in the Kobrin suburb were approved by the Directorate for Communications and Public Facilities.
Initially, mainly wooden buildings of 1-2 floors were erected in the town due to the proximity to the fortress. A few houses from stone were built “in the latest style, quite elegant and large, and some are even huge for the province”, wrote historian Pavel Shpilevsky in his book Traveling Through Polesye and the Belarusian Land in 1853. Stone and wooden mansions along Dvoryanskaya (Mickiewicz) Street had mansards and porticos on the main facades.
The urban development plan provided for several squares in the town. Market Square was built in the center, Dumskaya Square (Freedom Square) was in the northern part, Cathedral Square was at the intersection of Dvoryanskaya Street (Mickiewicz Street) and Millionnaya Street (Sovetskaya Street). In 1842, the Gostiny Dvor shopping arcade was arranged on the square, which housed 178 shops and stalls. Later, a post office and a station with passenger rooms were built.
Immediately after the relocation of the town, a municipal garden was laid on the banks of the Mukhavets River in the southeastern part of the Kobrin suburb (now the territory of a thermal power plant). It had a wooden summer theater of a unique design, in which the stage could be easily transformed into a tribune, a circus arena, or into a theater stage.
The Holy Cross Church (1856), a synagogue (1861), the five-domed St. Simeon Cathedral (1865) were built in the new town using the funds received as compensation for the church property, land and buildings alienated during the construction of the fortress.
The town entered the period of a major construction boom in the 1870s after the construction of the Dnieper-Bug Canal and railways. Brest-Litovsk became a major railway junction where three major rail routes converged - Moscow-Brest, Warsaw-Terespol and South-Western, which had a huge impact on the town’s development and was a major driver of population growth (20,000 residents in 1862 vs. 35,000 residents in 1885).
In 1883-1886, a new railway station was built in Brest-Litovsk to the project of architect Boris Lorberg, and engineers I. Nikolai and Ya. Gorbunov. It was a huge and beautiful brick building that cost the treasury almost 2 million rubles. The railway station that looked like a medieval fortress was recognized as one of the best in the Russian Empire in terms of design and convenience. New streets began to be laid from the railway station to the downtown and the fortress.
At the end of the century, the local industry was dominated by handicraft production with only a few small processing factories, since it was forbidden to build tall buildings and chimneys in the town because of defense reasons.
As far as trade was concerned, Brest was much more significant than Minsk, Mogilev, Gomel, or Vitebsk. The town hosted two annual fairs: one on Desyatukha (the 10th week after Easter) and the other one on St. Nicholas Day (9 May). These fairs were considered the best in the Belarusian lands. They drew merchants from various countries and many towns of Russia.
It was possible to get from the railway station to the town or to the fortress by carriages that were on standby on Market Square. The first public transport in Brest-Litovsk was omnibuses - multi-seat horse-drawn carriages that traveled along fixed routes, to the station, to the fortress.
At first, Brest-Litovsk was illuminated at night by candles placed inside lanterns. They were later replaced by oil lanterns, and then alcohol and kerosene lanterns. Lighting was on for only 800 hours a year, mainly in winter. Some 134 buckets of alcohol were used to keep the lights on. Only the central part of the town was illuminated. The best illuminated areas were Shosseinaya Street (today’s Masherova Avenue) where one could often see post stagecoaches, couriers and other transport.
According to the 1897 Russian Empire Census, Brest-Litovsk had a population of 46,568 (25,509 men and 21,059 women).