Russian empire countries

The notorious rebel leader Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev was born in or In September , he assembled a small band of guerrilla forces in southern Russia. Claiming to be Tsar Peter III (who had been murdured during the coup when Catherine the Great took the throne), Pugachev promised freedom and land to the serfs and other discontented peoples.

Assuaged by these promises, his force reached several thousand rather quickly.

Yemelyan pugachev biography of martin luther Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev (also spelled Pugachyov; Russian: Емельян Иванович Пугачёв; c. – 21 January [O.S. 10 January] ) was an ataman of the Yaik Cossacks and the leader of the Pugachev's Rebellion, a major popular uprising in the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine the Great.

They captured the city of Orenburg and held it for several months. During and his band rampaged throughout the Volga region.

On 5 August , Yagodnaya Polyana was attacked, three men were captured and later whipped to death. The following day Saratov was taken and the rebels ransacked the city, opening prisons and government storehouses and executing captured aristocrats and officials whose bodies Pugachev ordered left unburied.

Of import to Volga German history is that during this sacking of Saratov many documents recording the early years of the colonies were destroyed.

From the 9th through the 13th, Pugachev’s renegades traveled from Saratov to Kamyshin wrecking havoc as they went from village to village among the German colonies.

Their path of destruction took them through the colonies of Norka, Huck, Kutter, Dönhof, Bauer, Merkel, Kratzke, Göbel, Kamenka, Holstein, Dreispitz, and Dobrinka.

Many settlers fled to hide in the countryside, burying what few valuables they possessed while others remained in the villages.

Yemelyan pugachev biography of martin Yemelyan Pugachev, leader of a major Cossack and peasant rebellion in Russia (Pugachev Rebellion, –75). He began his rebellion by claiming he was Emperor Peter III and decreeing the abolition of serfdom. He won a number of victories but was ultimately betrayed by some of his followers and executed.

On such individual, Johann Wilhelm Stärkel, great-grandfather of Reverend Stärkel, who was a leading figure in the later pietistic movement, was seized by Pugachev's men when the entered the colony of Norka. Along with others he was forced to drive the rebels' stolen wagons to a point near Kamyshin and later miraculously escaped.

Continuing to sweep southward, the main force under Pugachev passed through Dönhof and approached Kratzke where cellars, and clay pits and even wells were filled with all kinds of property and strewn with earth.

The cattle were driven into the forests and canyons or tied among the reeds and rushes of the river. A young man, hiding with others in the garret of the Kratzke schoolhouse, later related how Pugachev arrived in front of the school in a heavily escorted carriage and promptly had a gallows erected from two long poles and a crossbeam.

Yemelyan pugachev biography of martin lewis Yemelyan Pugachev was a Cossack leader who started and led a prominent rebellion in Russia in the late 18th century. The rebellion involved peasants and was also called ‘Pugachev Rebellion’. He is also infamous for posing as Emperor of Russia—Catherine II’s late husband, Emperor Peter III.

Four bound prisoners on horseback were led in and beaten, then hung in pairs on two ropes thrown over the crossbeam. The grim scene was repeated many times as surviving colonists recalled the times when at night the horizon was bright with the lurid flames of destruction in the villages.

Pugachev was finally defeated by government forces south of Sarepta and was later captured in the Urals following his betrayal by fellow rebels on 15 September He was taken to Moscow and after a trial was executed there on 11 January for his crimes.

The devasting consequences of his raids through the German colonies along the Volga River were to be felt for many years.