Yemelyan Pugachev

Yemelyan Pugachev was born around 1742, the son of a Don Cossack landowner, and served in the Imperial Russian Army through the Seven Years' War and into the Russo-Turkish War. In 1770 he deserted and spent years as a fugitive, moving among restless peasants, Cossacks, and Old Believers in a Russia straining under Catherine the Great. In 1773 he declared himself Tsar Peter III — Catherine's late husband — and launched open rebellion, pledging to abolish serfdom and rallying a large army that swept across the territory between the Volga and the Urals. His forces captured and razed Kazan in 1774…