Daugavgrīva

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The Swedish army bombarding the fortress of Dünamünde.

Daugavgrīva (German: Dünamünde; Polish: Dynemunt; Russian: Усть-Двинск or Ust`-Dvinsk) was a strong fortress commanding the mouth of the Daugava, hence its name. Since 1959, Daugavgrīva has been a district of Riga in Latvia.

The settlement was established 13 miles from Bishop Albert of Riga's residence in Riga by Cistercian monks of Pforta in 1205. Albert's brother Dietrich was an early head of the monastery, while during the 1210s Count Bernhard II of Lippe was its abbot. During a rebellion of tribal Curonians in 1228,^[1] the monastery and its tombs were destroyed, although the monks rebuilt the abbey after fighting died down. They also had to endure abuse by the undisciplined crusaders of the Livonian Order. Those knights were defeated at the Battle of Saule, however, and their remnants were incorporated into the Teutonic Knights in 1237. Until 1452 the territory of Siggelkow in Mecklenburg was owned by the monastery. In 1305, the local abbot sold the monastery to the Livonian Branch of the Teutonic Knights, who began construction of the fortress of Dünamünde.

In 1329, the knights' castle was taken by the burghers of Riga, who were forced to return it to the knights in 1435. In 1481, the knights closed the Daugava to navigation by stretching an iron chain from Dünamünde to the opposite riverbank, thus hoping to ruin Riga's trade. In retaliation the citizens of Riga captured Dünamünde and destroyed it. The knights returned to rebuild the stronghold eight years later. Because Riga itself was controlled by the Archbishops, the local administrative seat (Komturei) of the monastic state of the Teutonic Knights was located in Dünamünde.

In 1561 during the Livonian War, Dünamünde became part of Poland. In 1582 the fortress was fortified by King Stephen Bathory, who referred to it as Dynemunt. On August 1, 1608 the fortress was taken by the Swedes under Count Frederick Joachim Mansfeld, who moved it closer to a new river-bed and renamed it Neumünde ("new mouth"). As soon as Mansfeld left the Gulf of Riga for Sweden, the Neumünde contingent of 250 soldiers was routed by Jan Karol Chodkiewicz of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The fighting continued in 1617, but the result was roughly the same. In 1621 King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden inspected Dynemunt after capturing it and ordered the fort to be completely rebuilt. The new Swedish fortress of Dünamünde, designed in a Dutch style by General Rothenburg in 1641, replaced Neumünde by 1680.

The Russians, however, under Peter I, took the fortress in the Great Northern War and reconstructed it thoroughly. A local Lutheran church was rebuilt into the Orthodox Church of the Saviour's Transfiguration in 1775. Regent Anna Leopoldovna of Russia, her husband Anthony Ulrich, and her son Ivan VI were incarcerated in Dünamünde in 1742.

Wilhelm II inspecting the fortress in 1917.

The Russian government renamed the fortress, where only Russian soldiers were living, to Ust-Dvinsk in 1893. They had its fortifications completely reconstructed prior to World War I. During the war Ust-Dvinsk was bombarded by the Schütte-Lanz Airship SL 7 of the German Army. After the fortress was taken by Imperial Germany, it was inspected by Emperor Wilhelm II in 1917. The Latvian government, however, demolished much of the fortifications several years later. During the Cold War Ust-Dvinsk was a base for Soviet troops. The site is now known in Latvian as Daugavgrīva.