ELBING, a seaport town of Prussia, at the head of a circle in the government of Dantzig, 36 miles E.S.E. of the city of that name, on the Elbing, a small river which flows into the Frische Haff about four miles from the town, and is united with the Nogat or eastern arm of the Vistula by means of the Kraffυhl canal. The old town was formerly surrounded by fortifications, but of these only a few fragments remain. There are seven Evangelical, one Roman Catholic, and two Mennonite churches, a synagogue, a gymnasium founded in 1536, with a public library of 22,000 volumes, an orphan-asylum, several hospitals, and numerous charitable institutions. Of these last a number owe their existence to the bequests of an Englishman, Richard Cowie, who settled in the town in 1810 and died at Dantzig in 1821. The manufacturing industry is extensive and varied, producing, among the rest, iron goods, iron ships, and machinery, sail-cloth, woollen cloth, leather, paper,, tobacco, starch, vitriol, and vinegar; and the transit trade has received a considerable increase by the opening of the Overland canal (1846-1861).

The existence of Elbing is due to a colony of Lübeck traders who settled under the protection of the castle of the Teutonic Knights in 1237. Invested with the Lubeck rights, and afterwards admitted into the Hanseatic confederation, the settlement was highly prosperous, and in 1335 greatly extended its limits by laying out a New Town. In 1434 it paid allegiance to Poland, and in 1454 was made the seat of a waiwode; but in 1525 it was captured by Albert of Brandenburg, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order. After various vicissitudes, it came at last to Prussia in 1772— decadent and declining; and its present prosperity is of quite recent date. Population in 1875, 33,572.