Lyady was founded in the 17th century. It was located on the road connecting
Moscow and
Warsaw. It is located near the
Mereya River, once the
border between Russia and
Poland and later between the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the
Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. During the
French invasion of Russia, on 14 August 1812, Ney and his troops crossed the former border into
old Russia at Lyady, proceeding toward Smolensk. By 18 November, after the defeat, Napoleon spent a night in the village where they stumbled upon a barn with hens and ducks. Lyady used to have a predominantly Jewish population, located in the
Pale of Settlement. It was a center of
Chabad chasidism for over a decade. The first rebbe
Shneur Zalman of Liadi settled there at the invitation of
Prince Stanisław Lubomirski,
voivode of the town, after his second imprisonment in 1800. After the German occupation of Belarus in the Second World War, the town's Jews were gathered into a ghetto. On April 2, 1942, the Germans and collaborators killed more than 2,000 Jews in the ghetto. ==Notable people==