Description
Known both for their mastery of horses and weapons and for their ferocity in battle, the Cossacks are descended from Central Asian refugees who populated the steppes of southern Russia and Ukraine. After the repression of Pugachev’s revolt in 1775 by Catherine II, they integrate the tsarist troops into elite territorial units composed of volunteers, where a form of hierarchy by election reigns, and the mere mention of their names makes one shudder. The Franco-Russian alliance signed in 1892 aroused a strong popular enthusiasm for an army seen as inexhaustible.
