The peasant war of 1773-1775 was far from beingthe first riot of the peasants. Already ten years before this event, there were more than forty such speeches. The Lord brought his serfs to utter despair. The latter increasingly made successful and not very successful attempts to escape. In the midst of the common people, fake manifestos and edicts were circulating that serfdom was about to be abolished. There were numerous impostors. So, six cases of the appearance of Peter III alone, which actually died in 1762, were officially recorded. Against the background of the events described, a peasant war broke out under the leadership of Emelian Pugachev.
He was born on the Don, in the village of Zimoveyska (in thatthe very place where Stepan Razin came from a hundred years before). At the age of 17 he was at war with Turkey and Prussia. For bravery, shown in battles, received the rank of cornet. Emelian was arrested for defending the interests of ordinary Cossacks and peasants. In 1773 he managed to escape from prison in Kazan. Appearing on Yaik, he called himself Peter III and gathered around him 80 Cossacks. Two weeks later, his army numbered 2,500.
The peasant war, although it began among the Cossacks,joined it and the workers, and serfs, and craftspeople, and representatives of many nationalities of the Volga region. And under one banner united hatred for the masters of the Old Believers, Muslims, pagans and Orthodox. E. Pugachev generously issued decrees and manifestos. The most famous of them promised the former serfs, lands, land, freed them from taxes.
A peasant war began on the same Yaik.First, Pugachev detachments captured small towns on the river. Then they besieged Orenburg - an important fortress in the southeast of the country. The troops of the queen led by General Kara came out of the city. The army of the general was defeated, the Bashkirs who accompanied her, went over to Pugachev's side. Formed detachments continued to conquer the cities of Russia.
A year later Pugatchov was finally defeatednear Orenburg. The peasant war entered its second stage. Detachments of rebels returned to the Urals, joined their ranks and, moving to Kazan, conquered it. However, the troops of the tsarina hastened to the city under the leadership of Mikhelson. In this battle Pugachev failed. Half a thousand of his people he transferred to the other side of the Volga.
The peasant war ended with the flight of E.Pugacheva, although it looked more like an invasion. Moving along the Volga down to get to the Don, his troops continued along the way to capture the cities. And just the last attempt to capture Tsaritsyn brought him a final defeat. Pugachev, with a handful of followers, hid behind the Volga, hoping soon to reassemble the detachment. However, there were Cossacks from the well-off who grabbed him and sent him to the tsarina in Moscow in order to earn her mercy in this way. In January 1775, Pugachev was executed along with his supporters on the Bolotnaya Square. Other participants were also punished. The rafts on which the gallows were mounted with the swinging corpses of the executed were sent to sail throughout the Volga in order to intimidate people and prevent a possible next uprising.
The army of peasants, headed by E.Pugachev suffered defeat, despite the mass character. The reason for this was his spontaneity, the concentration of the movement in one place, the acute shortage of weapons, the different social status of the participants, the lack of clearly stated goals, a clear program, a naive belief in a good monarch.
But it served as an incentive for Catherine II to carry out a number of reforms regarding the governing bodies in the localities, as well as to consolidate the rights of the population in estates in the legislation.
