Myaskovsky's birthplace had a curious symbolic aptness, for a man who spent much of his life feeling spiritually besieged and contending with environments that he experienced as profoundly alien. Modlin Fortress's picturesque location at the confluence of the Narew River with the majestic Vistula, some twenty-five miles northwest of Warsaw, does little to offset its dour dominance of the surrounding countryside. The idea of constructing a fort here originated with Napoleon, who was quick to grasp the area's strategic importance as he set about strengthening the border between Russia and the Duchy of Warsaw, the client state that he created from ceded Prussian territory in 1807. By the time of its completion in 1810, Napoleon was planning actively for a future Russian campaign: he now envisioned Modlin as the principal supply depot and defensive bulwark behind the front lines. A second, more ambitious programme of works was instituted to surround the citadel with an outer ring of defences, and by 1812, over twenty thousand labourers were toiling on the site. The project was never completed: after the Grande Armee's retreat from Moscow, the fortress was captured by Russian forces in December 1813. The Duchy of Warsaw effectively became absorbed into the Russian Empire after the Congress of Vienna and Russian control of the region intensified in the wake of the Polish uprising of 1830–1, which prompted a massive expansion of Modlin between 1832 and 1841 to accommodate a large Russian garrison. The principal additions were an enormous granary and a tall, fortified barracks capable of billeting twenty thousand soldiers, which at almost one and a half miles in length remains one of the longest buildings in Europe. Predictably, the fortress was given a new Russian name –Novogeorgievsk. Its enlargement also served to strengthen the Russian Empire's western frontier, as Novogeorgievsk formed part of a chain of fortifications commenced in the 1830s that extended southward to Warsaw and Ivangorod (Dęblin) and thence eastward to Brest. This costly investment in military infrastructure yielded a poor return, for the fortresses proved to be little more than white elephants: interest in them only revived after the Franco-Prussian War, which afforded a dramatic demonstration of the potential of new technologies to transform traditional warfare. Plans to modernise Novogeorgievsk were mooted in 1872, but their realisation would be mired in delays for over a decade.