Prince Volkonsky [the governor-general of Moscow] be offended and made to look silly, but I myself will be seen publicly to be praising a man who is a first class liar and who has personally offended me.”
Catherine did not completely surrender to Peter Panin. Buoyed by her sweeping victory over the Turks and by Pugachev’s defeat at Kazan, she restricted his authority to the regions directly affected and declared that the Investigating Commission would remain under her direct personal supervision. Panin was further circumscribed by being given Suvorov as his second in command. Panin, like Bibikov, was encouraged to enlist the nobility in the rebellious provinces. As their reward, all privileges of the aristocracy, including absolute power over their serfs, were guaranteed by the crown. This approach produced results: the noblemen mustered men, money, and supplies of food.
In the field, Panin’s methods of retribution were only marginally less cruel than those of Pugachev. Earlier, under Bibikov, the army had dealt leniently with captured rebels. After the relief of Orenburg, the vast majority of Pugachev’s followers taken prisoner had been released with a safe conduct pass and told to go home. Most of the prisoners captured in the battles outside Kazan were released with fifteen kopecks travel money. Now, as the revolt entered the final phase with Pugachev’s destructive move down the Volga, Panin imposed fierce reprisals. On August 24, he issued a proclamation threatening all who had taken part in the revolt with death by quartering. Panin knew that he was exceeding the authority granted him by Catherine, but she was far away and he ignored her.
Catherine spent August at Tsarskoe Selo anxiously following Pugachev’s rampage down the Volga. By the end of the month she told Voltaire that she was expecting “something decisive,” because for ten days she had not heard from Panin, and since “bad news travels faster than good, I am hoping for something good.” As Suvorov’s veterans advanced, Pugachev’s army began melting away. Yet even near the end he inspired fear. On July 26, in Saransk, he dined in the house of the governor’s widow and then hanged her outside her window. Nobles were hanged upside down in groups with their heads, hands, and feet cut off. On August 1, horsemen announced in the marketplace of Penza that “Peter III” was coming and that if he were not welcomed with the traditional bread and salt, everyone in the town, including babies, would be slaughtered. He came, was welcomed, two hundred men were forcibly recruited, and the governor’s house was burned down with the governor and twenty of the gentry locked inside. In another town, a resident astronomer was hanged so that he might be “nearer the stars.”
Pugachev’s attempts to recruit among his fellow Don Cossacks were mostly ignored. Everyone knew that a reward of twenty thousand rubles had been posted for his capture and that veteran government troops were approaching. Many also knew that Pugachev was not Peter III. When he appeared on August 21 before Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad, now Volgograd), riding forward to talk to a group of Don Cossack leaders, he was publicly recognized and denounced as an impostor. Two days later, on August 24, he suffered final defeat at Sarepta, south of Tsaritsyn. The defeat became a rout. Pugachev escaped by swimming the Volga with thirty followers. But defeat, fear, and hunger were sapping the loyalty of everyone around him.
On September 15, 1774, almost exactly a year after he had launched his revolt, Pugachev was back where he had begun: at Yaitsk on the Yaik River. There, a group of frightened lieutenants, hoping to save themselves by betrayal, fell on their sleeping chief. “How dare you raise your hands against your emperor?” he shouted. “You will achieve nothing.” Unmoved, they delivered him in chains to Peter Panin.
On September 30, Panin wrote to Catherine that he had seen the “infernal monster.” Pugachev had made no attempt to sustain his imposture. He fell on his knees, declared that he was Emelyan Pugachev, and admitted that, in parading himself as Peter III, he had sinned before God and Her Imperial Majesty. He was placed inside an iron cage not large enough to allow him to stand, and the cage was bolted onto a two-wheeled cart. In this manner, he was trundled for hundreds of miles to Moscow, through towns and villages where he had been hailed as a liberating hero.
On November 4, 1774, Pugachev and his rolling cage arrived in Moscow. Six weeks of interrogation began. The empress was resolved to satisfy her doubts about the rebellion; she still could not believe that an illiterate Cossack had instigated the revolt on his own. Voltaire lightheartedly proposed that Pugachev be asked, “Sir, are you master or servant? I do not ask who employs you but simply whether you are employed.” Catherine wanted more: if there were employers, she wished to know their identities. Catherine carefully monitored the proceedings, but despite the intensity of her curiosity, she refused to allow the use of the rack. Before the investigation began, she had written to Prince Volkonsky, governor-general of Moscow, “For God’s sake, refrain from all questioning under torture which always obscures the truth.” Behind this command was not only her opposition to barbarism but also political calculation. The rebellion appeared to have spent itself, but that had also seemed the case before the surprise assault on Kazan. Perhaps, even now, there might be another leader waiting to revive the rebellion. Torture of the man whom many peasants had believed was a tsar could provide another spark. Although she was intrigued by the impostor’s character and motives, she had no desire to see him. She was already planning a lengthy visit to Moscow to celebrate the peace with Turkey, and she wished the whole Pugachev business to be finished before she arrived. As for foreign influence, even before the interrogators were finished Catherine concluded that there was none. To Voltaire she wrote, “The Marquis de Pugachev has lived like a scoundrel and will die like a coward. He cannot read or write, but he is a bold and determined man. So far there is not a shred of evidence that he was the instrument of any foreign power. It is to be supposed that Monsieur Pugachev is a master brigand and no man’s servant. No one since Tamerlane has done more harm than he.”
On December 5, the work of the interrogating commission was completed. Pugachev had confessed and expressed hope for mercy, but a death sentence was inevitable. Nevertheless, Catherine wrote to Voltaire, “If it were only me he had harmed, his hopes could be justified and I should pardon him, but this trial involves the empire and its laws.” To dissociate herself publicly from the trial and execution, she privately sent Procurator General Vyazemsky to Moscow with instructions to end the affair quickly. She followed by writing to the Moscow governor, Prince Volkonsky: “Please help to inspire everyone with moderation both in the number and in the punishment of the criminals. The opposite will be regrettable to my love for humanity. We do not have to be clever to deal with barbarians.”
Vyazemsky did his best to obey. To avoid public pressure in the vengeful atmosphere of Moscow, he established a special court made up of high officials and members of the Holy Synod. The trial was conducted secretly in the Kremlin on December 30 and 31. Pugachev was brought before the court on the second day. He fell on his knees, admitted again that he was Emelyan Pugachev, acknowledged his crimes, and declared that he repented before God and the all-merciful empress. When he was led away, the judges decided that he should be quartered alive and then beheaded. But when the same sentence was awarded to one of his lieutenants, several judges protested that the sentence on Pugachev should be more severe and painful than that on others. “So they wanted to break Pugachev on the wheel,” Vyazemsky wrote to Catherine, “in order to distinguish him from the rest.” Eventually, the procurator general persuaded the court to leave Pugachev’s sentence as it was. Knowing that the empress would never accept the public spectacle of Pugachev being quartered alive, Vyazemsky secretly arranged with Moscow’s chief of police to have the executioner “accidentally” behead Pugachev first and afterward chop off his hands and feet. The execution took place before an immense crowd in a Moscow square on January 10, 1775. Pugachev crossed himself and laid his head on the block. Then, to the indignant rage of spectators who included noblemen come to savor their revenge, the executioner seemed to bungle his job by immediately decapitating Pugachev; many were convinced that either the executioner was incompetent or that he had been bribed by someone. Four of Pugachev’s lieutenants were quartered first, then beheaded. The lieutenants who had betrayed and handed over their chief were pardoned.
A few days after Pugachev’s death, Catherine departed for Moscow to celebrate Russia’s victory over Turkey. While there, she also began obliterating all traces of the internal revolt. Pugachev’s two wives and three children were incarcerated in the fort of Kexholm in Russian Finland. Pugachev’s house on the Don was razed. It was forbidden to speak his name, and his brother, who had not participated in the revolt, was ordered to stop using the family name. The Yaik Cossacks were renamed the
