[3] However, many of the indigenous inhabitants died out during the wars, famine and plague in the late 17th and the early 18th centuries, and the Belarusian population replaced them.

[4] The link between consonants š and k is old and present in the Lithuanian words, respectively ašmuo (sharp blade) and akmuo (stone).

[3] The first reliable mention of Ašmena is in the Lithuanian Chronicles, which tells that after Gediminas' death in 1341, Jaunutis inherited the town.

[3] The Roman Catholic Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven [be-tarask; be; ru] was built after 1387.

[citation needed] After the town was taken by the royalists, it became the private property of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania and started to develop rapidly.

[3] Ashmyany did not recover as quickly as previously after 1519, and in 1537 the town was granted several royal privileges to facilitate its reconstruction.

[citation needed] In 1566, the town finally received Magdeburg rights, which were confirmed in 1683 (along with the privileges for the local merchants and burghers) by King John III Sobieski.

[citation needed] In the 16th century the town was one of the most notable centers of Calvinism in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, after Mikołaj "the Red" Radziwiłł founded a college and a church there.

[3] During the French invasion of Russia, the Grande Armée took over Ašmena in 1812, and during several battles, the town partially burnt down.

[3]During the November Uprising, it was liberated by the town's citizens, led by a local priest, Jasiński, and Colonel Count Karol Dominik Przeździecki.

[citation needed] However, in April 1831, in the face of a Russian offensive, the fighters were forced to withdraw to the Naliboki forest.

[citation needed] After a minor skirmish with Stelnicki's rearguard, the Russian punitive expeditionary force of some 1,500 officers and soldiers proceeded to burn the town and massacre the civilian population, including some 500 women, children and elderly, who sought refuge in the Dominican Catholic Church.

[citation needed] It never recovered from its earlier losses, and by the end of the 19th century it became rather a provincial town, inhabited primarily by Jewish immigrants from other parts of Russia 'beyond the Pale'.

[citation needed] After the end of World War I and the withdrawal of the German army in 1919, Ashmyany was under Polish jurisdiction.

[citation needed] During the Nazi occupation, which began June 25, 1941, the Jews of Ashmyany and their spiritual leader Rabbi Zew Wawa Morejno were ghettoized.

[citation needed] After the Wehrmacht drove out the Soviet occupiers, Ashmyany was part of the Generalbezirk Litauen in Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941–1944.