LISSA (in Polish, Lesznd), a manufacturing town in the circle of Fraustadt, district of Posen, Prussia, is situated on the Breslau and Posen Railway, near the frontier of Silesia. The most prominent buildings are the handsome château, the mediaeval town-house, the three churches, and the synagogue. Its manufactures consist chiefly of cloth, liqueurs, tobacco, and wax; it also possesses several tanneries and a large steam flour-mill, and carries on a brisk trade in grain, cattle, spirits, wine, and furs. The population in 1880 was 11,758, including 3810 Roman Catholics and 1833 Jews.
Lissa owes its origin to a number of Moravian Brothers from Bohemia, who were banished by the emperor Ferdinand I. in the 16th century, and found a refuge on the estate of the Polish family of Leczynski. Their settlement received municipal rights in 1548. During the Thirty Years’ War the population was reinforced by other refugees, and Lissa became an important commercial town, and the chief seat of the Moravian Brothers in Poland. Comenius (q .v. ) was long rector of the celebrated Moravian school there. Lissa was twice burned down (in 1656 and 1707) during the Swedish and Polish wars....
LISSA (Lat., Issa ; Slav., Vis), an Austrian island in the Adriatic, 9 miles long, with a greatest breadth of 4 miles, is situated 41 miles from the coast of southern Dalmatia, almost due west of the mouth of the Narenta, in 43° Γ N. lat. and 16° 6' E. long. “The shape is a long parallelogram with two breaks, the Porto di S. Giorgio (one of the finest harbours of refuge in the Adriatic) on the eastern short side, and the Vallone di Comisa contained between two long prongs stretching due west and south-west. The outer walls are stony ridges rising from 470 to 610 feet above sea-level, and declining quaquaversally to the fertile plateau which, averaging 400 feet high, forms the body of the island. The apex is Monte Hum, a bald and flattened cone (1868 feet) on the south-west” (Burton). Winegrowing (for which Issa was famous of old) still forms the principal means of subsistence, an average season yielding from 70,000 to 80,000 barrels; but the sardine fishery (15,000 to 25,000 barrels per annum) is of growing importance, and the peasants distil about 24,000 ft of rosemary oil annually. The island is divided into two communes, Lissa and Comisa. In the former is the chief town, Lissa, with the palace of the old Venetian counts Gariboldi, the former residence of the English governor, the monastery of the Minorites, and at a little distance to the west the ruins of the ancient city of Issa. The population, 6485 in 1869, was 7871 in 1880.
Issa is said to have been settled by people from Lesbos, the Issa of the Aegean. The Parians, assisted by Dionysius the Elder of Syracuse, introduced a colony in the 4th century b.c. During the First Punic War the Issaeans with their beaked ships helped the Roman Duilius; and the great republic, having defended th^ir island against the attacks of Agron of Illyria and his queen Teuta, again found them faithful and serviceable allies in the war with Philip of Macedon. As early as 996 we find the Venetians in possession of the island, and, though they retired for a time before the Ragιι-sans, their power was effectually established in 1278. Velo Selo, which by that time had become the chief settlement, was destroyed by Ferdinand of Naples in 1483, and by the Turks in 1571. The present city arose shortly afterwards. During the Napoleonic wars Lissa was occupied by the French, but the English defeated their squadron in 1810, and kept possession of the island till July 1815, erecting fortifications (dismantled in 1870) and making it a centre of operations. In 1866 the Italians under Persano made an attack on Lissa, but were defeated by the Austrians under Tegetthoff—the battle being fought about 10 miles north of the harbour.
Seo Wilkinson (1848); Neale (1861); Brackenbury, in the Times, August 14, 1866; Revue mαrit. et col., 1867; and Burton in Journ. Roy. Qeog. Soc., 1879.
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