Lissa

Lissa (Pol. Leszno), a town of Prussia, 40 miles S. by W. of Posen, was during the 16th and 17th centuries the headquarters of the Bohemian Brethren in Poland; here were their most celebrated school, a seminary, a printing-office, and their archives. The town grew up round a colony of that sect, to whom the Leszczynski family afforded an asylum early in the 16th century. It was burned by the Poles in 1656, and again by the Russians in 1707; but is now a place of (1890) 13,116 inhabitants.