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Concept
Duchy of Courland and Semigallia
Summary
The Duchy of Courland and Semigallia (Ducatus Curlandiæ et Semigalliæ; Herzogtum Kurland und Semgallen; Kurzemes un Zemgales hercogiste; Kuršo ir Žiemgalos kunigaikštystė; Księstwo Kurlandii i Semigalii) was a duchy in the Baltic region, then known as Livonia, that existed from 1561 to 1569 as a nominally vassal state of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and subsequently made part of the Crown of the Polish Kingdom from 1569 to 1726 and incorporated into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1726. On March 28, 1795, it was annexed by the Russian Empire in the Third Partition of Poland.
There was also a short-lived wartime state with the same name that existed from March 8 to September 22, 1918. Plans for it to become part of the United Baltic Duchy, subject to the German Empire, were thwarted by Germany's surrender of the Baltic region at the end of the First World War. The area became a part of Latvia at the end of World War I.
In 1561, during the Livonian Wars, the Livonian Confederation was dismantled and the Livonian Order was disbanded. On the basis of the Treaty of Vilnius, the southern part of Estonia and the northern part of Latvia were ceded to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. On 25 December 1566, the Union of Grodno established a real union between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Duchy of Livonia. The part of Latvia between the west bank of the Daugava River and the Baltic Sea became the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia. It was ruled by the dukes from the House of Kettler with the exception of Ernst Johann Biron and his son Peter von Biron.
Gotthard Kettler, the last Master of the Livonian Order, became the first duke of Courland. Other members of the Order became the Couronian nobility, with the fiefdoms they had hitherto held becoming their estates. In all, Kettler received nearly one-third of the land in the new duchy. Mitau (Jelgava) was designated as the new capital and a Landtag was to meet there twice a year.
Several parts of the Courish area did not belong to the Duchy.
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