to Brześć was in 1431 without winning it this time. Throughout the period of Polish–Teutonic wars, Polish kings often visited the city either during fights of peace talks. The Polish–Teutonic War of 1431–1435 was ended with the signing of the Peace of Brześć Kujawski. The Thirteen Years' War, the longest of Polish–Teutonic wars, was not fought in the region, however King Casimir IV Jagiellon often stayed in the town at that time. Since the 14th century, Brześć was a royal city of the Polish Crown and capital of the Brześć Voivodeship, which, after the Union of Lublin (1569), was renamed Brześć Kujawski Voivodeship. King Casimir III the Great expanded the royal castle in Brześć in the 14th century. In 1496 Brześć was designated the location of the voivodeship's sejmik (provincial assembly). Various Polish Kings vested the town with multiple privileges in 1361, 1410, 1504, 1556, 1557, 1576, 1582, 1593, 1596, 1681, 1720, 1781, 1782, 1787 and 1793, and it was in Brześć that King Casimir III the Great granted the nearby major city of Bydgoszcz its city rights in 1346. Brześć was an important and thriving city, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was the center of grain trade, however it declined after Swedish invasions of 1655–1660 and 1701–1706. On 23 April 1782, King Stanisław August Poniatowski granted a privilege to the town's Jewish population that allowed them to build houses on a street specifically for those of the Jewish religion. The city was annexed by Prussia in the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, followed by rule of the short-lived Polish Duchy of Warsaw from 1807, and in 1815 it became part of so-called Congress Poland, soon forcibly integrated into the Russian Empire. It was restored to Poland after the country regained independence in 1918. During the German invasion of Poland, which started World War II, in September 1939, the town was quickly overrun by the Wehrmacht, and then under German occupation it was renamed Brest-Kujawien (1939-1942). In February 1940, the Germans expelled 300 Poles, owners of bigger and better houses, which then were handed over to German colonists as part of the Lebensraum policy, while Poles were deported in freight trains to the General Government. Local Polish parish priest Stefan Kuliński was arrested by the Germans in 1941, deported to the Dachau concentration camp, and then murdered in a gas chamber in the Hartheim Euthanasia Centre