The Empress Catherine's policy was to build up in all her frontier pro\'inces an agricultural population of peasant farmers. Although none of these foreign colonists were transferred to the Jaik, whole \nllages were settled about Samara on the Volga. But by this means new animosities were aroused, for in the process many of the original settlers were despoiled in favour of the newcomers. JNIost of the latter were, moreover, Germans, whose descendants, aliens in language and belief, were to be found, until the outbreak of the present war, li\Tng side by side with the Russian population, still di\ided from their neighbours by ancient quarrels.*
At the same time that the Cossacks found them-
* The foolish and short-sighted policy of the imperial German government in tampering with the Russian allegiance of these colonists through specious offers of "dual nationality" made just before the outbreak of the war has led to the irremediable dispersal — two hundred years after their foundation — of the chief source of German influence in this district. Here, again, the cynical disrespect of Grermany's rulers for international conventions brought the natural punishment for their misdeeds on innocent heads.
selves ousted from great tracts of "range" necessary for their cattle, the government had sought to force them to more "civilized pursuits" by cutting off the subsidies which had been allowed to every head of a Cossack family in return for his military services against the neighbouring Turkoman tribesmen. The strong element of Raskolniki among the Cossacks held to their beliefs with fanatical determination. These observances were often the cause of serious trouble with the authorities. Like the hoyars of Peter's time, the sectarians refused, on religious grounds, to shave or "trim the comers of the beard." When the military authorities were ordered to enroll these matchless horsemen into regiments of "Hussars" for service during the Turkish war, the first act of the general in command (a German, one of many serving in the Russian armies) was to order that his bearded recruits be publicly shorn in the principal square of the town of Jaikskoi. His fixed belief that no hussar could fight unless wearing moustaches prescribed by the German regulations ended in the massacre of all the foreign officers engaged in recruiting service. Only the arrival of regular troops put an end to this mutiny. The leaders, enjoying the approval and support of the Cossacks, easily escaped to the neighbouring desert.
In their secret headquarters on the Kirghiz steppes, Pougatchev joined the leaders of this revolt. Although in the eyes of the Tsarina's officials Pougatchev was only an escaped convict, his prestige was now established among the "Old Believers" by the imprisonment he had suffered for his religious belief. Successful defiance of the regulations protecting the merchants on the caravan road was but an added title to their respect. Before long he found himself elected the leader of a band of desert "Free Companions," who, with some pretence of copjdng the organization and customs of the Zaporogian Cossacks, now declared themselves independent of all authority. Travelling merchants and caravans were attacked under the, pretext of levying toll on all who ventured across their territory. Organized "lifting" of the cattle belonging to their more peaceful neighbours also furnished the means of an easy, even joyous, existence.
In the spring of the year 1773 Pougatchev, perhaps in order more formally to establish his leadership among his wild companions, or dreaming of wider opportunities for his ambition, appears first to have conceived the plan of appealing to their allegiance by claiming to be the murdered Tsar Peter III. Wildly improbable as the scheme may appear, it had, nevertheless, many features which promised success. The circumstances surrounding the assassination of this unworthy monarch, whom Catherine had supplanted, had always remained a disquieting mystery to the peasants of Russia. According to popular belief (but for what historical reasons it is difiicult to determine) he i