In the peace treaty signed in Toruń a few months later in 1466, the Teutonic Knights renounced any claims to the city, and recognized it as part of Poland.

One of the main escape routes for insurgents of the unsuccessful Polish November Uprising from partitioned Poland to the Great Emigration led through the city.

[4] In 1871, a large vodka distillery was built on the western end of city, which survived both world wars and today produces Sobieski and Krupnik.

[9][10] Under German occupation, the city was annexed into the newly formed Regierungsbezirk Danzig in the new province of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia.

The Polish population was subjected to mass arrests, imprisonment, tortures, massacres, expulsions, deportations to concentration camps and to forced labour.

The Germans immediately carried out mass arrests of Polish teachers, priests and local activists in the town and county as part of the Intelligenzaktion.

[11] Arrested Poles were then held both in the pre-war prison and the medieval Gdańsk Tower and often subjected to brutal beatings[12] and mistreatment, especially clergymen, some of whom had even swastikas cut into their foreheads.

[11] Beginning in September 1939 in nearby Szpęgawski Forest (north-east of the city) Germans killed in mass executions about 7,000 Poles, among them 1,680 Kocborowo (district of Starogard) and Świecie psychiatric hospitals patients.

[citation needed] Polish hospital staff was either murdered in the Szpęgawski Forest or deported to concentration camps or to forced labour to Germany.

[17] In 1945 the German occupation ended and the town was restored to Poland, however with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which remained in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s.

The town was home to the Polish World Cup football player and Olympic Gold Medal winner Kazimierz Deyna.

There is also a statue to him in the seating area of the ground, and a heritage trail through the town which takes in his birthplace, family home and murals to the sportsman.