Ujście

A royal town before the surrender

Ujście was a castellany centre and royal town. Władysław Jagiełło granted Magdeburg law in 1413, and John Casimir confirmed its privileges in 1650, just five years before the invasion. A brewers’ guild existed from 1596. In 1662 the king granted a charter establishing a shooting brotherhood. The settlement associated with surrender thus had its own economy and civic organisations. Its history also includes institutions sustaining the community after war, beyond the decision of Greater Poland’s senators¹.

During the Deluge

In the summer of 1655 the general levy of the nobility (pospolite ruszenie) of the Poznań and Kalisz voivodeships gathered in three camps on the Noteć, near Wieleń, Ujście and Piła. The łan infantry, raised according to landholding, occupied among other places the small town of Ujście². Kubala explains the importance of the place: Ujście lay at the apex of the arc that the Noteć forms between Nakło and Wieleń, and was the key to a defensive line six old Polish miles long³.

The camp at Ujście was protected by the Noteć and by the marshes on both sides of the river. To the west, a small redoubt near Dziembowo closed the narrow road through the bogs. To the east, next to the camp, lay the town, and at the confluence of the Gwda and the Noteć stood a small redoubt and a larger one with a causeway and six guns⁴. The Swedes outflanked this position by crossing the Noteć near Dziembowo⁵. On 25 July the senators of Greater Poland signed at Ujście the act placing the two voivodeships under the protection of Charles X Gustav⁶ (Capitulation at Ujście (1655)).

In the same year, according to the National Heritage Board (NID), the local parish church of St Nicholas, mentioned in 1641, burned down; a new, half-timbered church was built in 1666⁷.

In The Deluge (Potop) Ujście is the main defensive position:

Ujście, główną pozycję, zajął ze swymi ludźmi pan wojewoda poznański.

Henryk Sienkiewicz, The Deluge (Potop)⁸

(Our translation: "Ujście, the main position, was occupied by the voivode of Poznań with his men.")

Today

The present neo-Baroque parish church of St Nicholas was built in 1905–1907 to designs by the Berlin architect Oskar Siede. The former cemetery around it is the oldest burial ground in the town, and on the hill behind the church lies a calvary of 1891–1908, whose chapels, destroyed in 1942–1943, have been under reconstruction since 1998⁷.

The Old Market and a later church

A Lutheran church was built in 1851–1852 on the Old Market, formerly occupied by the stronghold, castle and starosta’s residence. Its timber framing retains rare wooden details and Gothic Revival furnishings, including a combined pulpit altar and organ case. It represents Ujście’s later multicultural history rather than the Swedish surrender. After the Second World War it became a warehouse; repairs began in 1996⁹.