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TheUral Cossack Host was acossack host formed from theUral Cossacks – those Eurasian cossacks settled by theUral River. Their alternative name,Yaik Cossacks, comes from the old name of the river.
They were also known by the names:
The Yaik (Ural) Cossacks although speaking Russian and identifying themselves as being of primarily Russian ancestry also incorporated manyTatars into their ranks.[1]According to Peter Rychckov some of these Tatars called themselves Bulgarians ofKhazar origin, and the first Yaik Cossacks, including these Tatars and Russians, existed by the end of the 14th century.[2] These Tatars might be bothChuvash people and Mishari (Meschera in Russian,Mişär in Tatar language), the latter had not only Muslims and Jews, but Christians among them to facilitate their merge with Russians.[3] Meschera were important on Don as well. Later, as Pushkin wrote, a lot ofNogai joined Yaik Cossacks.Twenty years after the conquest of the Volga from Kazan to Astrakhan, in 1577[4] Moscow sent troops to disperse pirates and raiders along the Volga (one of their number wasErmak). Some of these fled southeast to the Ural River and joined the Yaik Cossacks. In 1580 they capturedSaraichik together. By 1591 they were fighting for Moscow and sometime in the next century they were officially recognized. In 1717 they lost 1,500 men on theAlexander Bekovich-Cherkassky expedition toKhiva. A census in 1723 showed 3,196 men fit for military service.
Yaik Cossacks were the driving force inthe rebellion led byYemelyan Pugachev in 1773–1774.Their main livelihood wasfishery and the taxation on it was a major source of friction between the Cossacks and the state. A revolt broke out in 1772, marked by the murder of General vonTraubenberg. Traubenberg headed a commission which was to investigate and settle Cossack complaints and grievances, but his behaviour only antagonized them further. In reprisal, many were arrested, executed and outlawed. Pugachev appeared shortly after and managed to rally them to his cause.
The Yaik Cossacks were renamed as part of the Ural Host after the rebellion.
The Ural regiments later took part inSuvorov's Italian and Swiss expedition, theGreat Patriotic War of 1812, theRusso-Turkish War, theNovember Uprising of 1830 and in theCrimean War. They also played a significant role in theTurkestan campaigns of the 1870s.
In the Ural-Guryev operation of 1919–1920, the RedTurkestan Front defeated theUral Army, which was formed from Ural Cossacks and other troops which rebelled against the Bolsheviks. During winter 1920, Ural Cossacks and their families, totaling about 15,000 people, headed south along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea towardsFort Alexandrovsk. Only a few hundred of them reached Persia in June 1920.[5]
The distinguishing colour of the Ural Host was crimson/red; worn on the cap bands,epaulettes and wide trouser stripes of a dark blue uniform of the loose-fitting cut common to the Steppe Cossacks.[6] Individual regiments were distinguished by yellow numbers on the epaulettes. High fleece hats were worn on occasion with crimson cloth tops. No spurs were worn by the Ural and other cossack hosts. After 1907 a khaki-grey jacket was adopted for field uniform, worn with blue-grey breeches.[7] Theastrakhan hats and broad crimson/red trouser stripes of the peacetime uniform were however retained during World War I.[8]