28 September — Yemelyan Pugachev, having assumed the name of Emperor Peter III, published a manifesto in which he called on the Cossacks to pledge loyalty and service to him, granting them freedoms and privileges. He gathered under his banners an entire army capable of matching the government forces and led large numbers of people after him. The peasant uprising spread across the lands of the Yaik Cossack Host, the Orenburg region, the Urals, the Kama River area, Bashkiria, part of Western Siberia, and the Middle and Lower Volga region.
During the uprising, Bashkirs, Tatars, Kazakhs, Ural factory workers, and many serf peasants from all the provinces where hostilities unfolded joined the Cossacks. The Pugachev uprising (Pugachev revolt) grew into a full-scale peasant war.
Catherine tasked Bibikov with suppressing the rebellion, and he immediately grasped the essence of the matter. It is not Pugachev who matters, he said; what matters is the general discontent. Bashkirs, Kalmyks, and Kyrgyz joined the Yaik Cossacks and the rebelling peasants. Directing operations from Kazan, Bibikov sent detachments from all sides to the most dangerous areas. Prince Golitsyn relieved Orenburg, Mikhelson took Ufa, and Mansurov took the Yaik townlet.
Salavat Yulaev (Yulaev as a patronymic) was a Bashkir, a participant in the Pugachev revolt and the principal instigator of the uprising of the Bashkirs and other non-Russian peoples in Orenburg Governorate. The son of a volost headman—wealthy and influential—a connoisseur of the Tatar language and the Quran, and possessed of “supernatural” strength, Salavat, at twenty years of age, joined Pugachev, formed entire detachments from the risen non-Russian peoples, looted the Simsky and Katavsky works, besieged the Chelyabinsk fortress, took part in the siege of Orenburg, and burned the Krasnoufimsk fortress. After the defeats inflicted on him and on Pugachev by Mikhelson, he broke away from Pugachev.
16 December — the destruction in Boston of a cargo of tea belonging to the English East India Company, in protest against the tax on tea imposed by Great Britain.
In 1698, the English Parliament granted the English East India Company a monopoly on supplying tea to Great Britain. To suppress competition in the North American colonies, in 1721 Parliament passed a law requiring tea to be purchased only in Great Britain. However, because of high taxes and duties, it became more выгодно for the population to buy smuggled tea, which was not taxed. In 1773, the British government issued the Tea Act, allowing the East India Company to sell tea directly in the North American colonies at a price twice as low as before, and also cheaper than in Great Britain and from any local tea merchants and smugglers. Many colonists were outraged by the new law.
In Boston, the selective repeal of tea taxes was seen as yet another attempt by Great Britain to stop the independence movement in the colonies. Samuel Adams, leader of the American revolutionary group the Sons of Liberty, and his associates called on the consignees and intermediaries of the East India Company’s tea to cease their activities. Warehouses, shops, and even the homes of those unwilling to support the rebellion were subjected to attacks and destruction.
At the end of 1773, the first ship carrying East India Company tea arrived in Boston Harbor—the Dartmouth. A conflict arose between the port authorities and the Sons of Liberty. The revolutionaries quickly organized several meetings at which people demanded that the tea be destroyed. The owner and captain of the Dartmouth promised to return the tea to Great Britain. However, the governor of Boston ordered the harbor blocked and the departure of unloaded ships prevented.
16 December — Captain Rotch asked Governor Hutchinson to allow the ships to sail without unloading, but was refused. Soon a group of the Sons of Liberty, dressed in the national costumes of Native Americans and armed with axes and clubs, boarded the Dartmouth and the docked ships Eleanor and Beaver, quickly emptied the holds, and threw about 45 tons of tea overboard.
This event went down in history as the Boston Tea Party, which became one of the catalysts of the American Revolutionary War, demonstrating the desire of the people of the thirteen colonies to gain independence.
3 September — the signing of the Peace of Paris between Great Britain and the 13 former North American colonies brought the American War of Independence to an end. Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States.