The peasant war of 1773-1775 was far from the first revolt of the peasants. Already ten years before this event, there were more than forty such performances. The Lord brought their serfs to complete despair. The latter increasingly made successful and not-so-very flight attempts. Fake manifestos and decrees were circulating among the common people that serfdom was about to be abolished . Numerous impostors appeared. Thus, six cases of the appearance of only Peter III, which actually died in 1762, were officially recorded. Against the background of the events described, a peasant war broke out under the leadership of Yemelyan Pugachev.
He was born on the Don, in the village of Zimoveyskaya (in the same one where Stepan Razin came from a hundred years earlier). As early as 17 years old, he went to war with Turkey and Prussia. For the courage shown in the battles, he received the rank of corral. Emelyan was arrested for protecting the interests of ordinary Cossacks and peasants. In 1773, he managed to escape from prison in Kazan. Having appeared on Yaik, he called himself Peter III and gathered around him 80 Cossacks. Two weeks later, his army was already 2,500.
The peasant war, although it began among the Cossacks, was joined by workers, serfs, artisans, and representatives of many Volga nationalities. Moreover, under the same banner united hatred of 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 serfdom will, land, land, exempted them from taxes.
A peasant war began on the same Yaik. First, Pugachev’s troops captured small cities on the river. Then they besieged Orenburg - an important fortress in the south-east of the country. To help the city came the troops of the Queen under the leadership of General Kara. The army of the general was defeated, the Bashkirs who accompanied her crossed to the side of Pugachev. The formed units continued to conquer the cities of Russia.
A year later, Pugachev was finally defeated near Orenburg. The peasant war entered its second stage. The rebel troops returned to the Urals, replenished their ranks and, moving to Kazan, conquered it. However, the troops of the tsarina led by Michelson hurried to the city. In this battle, Pugachev failed. He transferred fifty thousand people to the other side of the Volga.
The peasant war ended with the flight of E. Pugachev, although it looked more like an invasion. Moving down the Volga to get to the Don, his troops continued on their way to capture the city. And just the last attempt to capture Tsaritsyn brought him a final defeat. Pugachev with a handful of followers took cover behind the Volga, hoping to soon assemble a detachment again. However, there were Cossacks from the well-to-do who seized him and sent him in a cage 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 Bolotnaya Square. Other participants in the performance were punished. The rafts on which the gallows were installed with swaying corpses of the executed were set sailing throughout the Volga in order to intimidate people and prevent a possible next uprising.
The army of peasants, led by E. Pugachev, was defeated, despite the mass character. The reason for this was his spontaneity, the concentration of movement in one place, the acute shortage of weapons, the different social conditions of the participants, the lack of clearly stated goals, a clear program, and a naive faith in a good monarch.
But it served as an incentive for Catherine II to carry out a number of reforms regarding local governing bodies, as well as to consolidate the rights of the population on the estates in the legislation.