Liquidation of the Zaporozhian Sich

After the palace coup of 1762, Catherine II, the wife of Emperor Peter III, ascended the imperial throne and immediately made every effort to strengthen the power of the autocracy in the vast empire.

When the Hetmanate was liquidated in 1764, and a year later the regimental-hundred system in Slobozhanshchyna, the last stronghold was the Zaporizhzhya Sich, which in Russian ruling circles was seen as a "hut of rebels and bandits."

There were only a few thousand Cossacks in the Sich at that time, and the rest went to palanquins and winter quarters after the war.

[2] A council headed by Kosh Ataman Petro Kalnyshevskyi convened at the Sich, and fierce debates erupted in an attempt to find a way out of the hopeless situation in which the Zaporozhian Cossacks found themselves.

The council decided not to shed Christian blood and voluntarily laid down its arms in front of the Muscovites.

As the participants in the events at the Sich recalled: the characters did not want to surrender to Catherine at all, and other Cossacks said: “No, brother, we have parents and children: a Muscovite will cut them.