Instead, he and his militia joined the rebels, and the joint forces captured and ravaged the town of Uman on June 21, 1768.

When Gonta sent a detachment to spread rebellion into the Ottoman Empire, Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia, dispatched a regiment of Don Cossacks fighting against Bar confederation to help Poland suppress the rebellion to prevent Ottomans from waging a war against Russia.

The commander of the Russian unit, Guriev, made the rebels believe he was siding with them for the joint trip against Bar confederation and managed to capture approximately 900 of them without a single shot.

Sentenced to death by grand Crown Hetman Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, he was then executed in the village of Serby by being flayed alive and quartered.

He was immortalized in Taras Shevchenko's controversial epic poem Haidamaky though Gonta had never killed his Roman Catholic sons, because his wife and children were of Orthodox faith and in fact he had never initiated the massacre of Uman himself.