Black Sea Cossack Host

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Black Sea Cossack Host (Черноморское казачье войско) was a Cossack host created in 1787 in Southern Ukraine from former Zaporozhians. In 1790s the host was resettled to Kuban River. It defended the Caucasus Fortified Defence Line from the inlet of Kuban River to the inlet of the Bolshaya Laba River.

The Black Sea host played a crucial role in the Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792). As a result Catherine II rewarded them with the Kuban land in the North Caucasus. At that time the area was an uninhibited steppe region that the Russian Empire had gained control of in 1784.

Renamed the Black Sea Cossack Host, a total of 25 thousand people of both gender made the migration in 1792-93 from Ukraine, settling on the regions north of the Kuban River. Initially Zaporozhia traditions were adhered to in the Black Sea Cossacks, such as the democratic election of the host government, but in time many were replaced by Russian ones.

Instead of a central Sich, they formed defence line from the the inlet of Kuban River into the Black Sea to the inlet of the Bolshaya Laba River, and colonised the land north of this line with stanitsas.

An administrative centre of Yekaterinodar (now Krasnodar (literally Cathrine's gift) was set up. At the same time, however, the Black Sea Cossacks also sent men to many major campaigns of the Russian Empire, such as the suppression of the Polish Kościuszko Uprising in 1794, the ill-fated Persian Expedition of 1796 where nearly half of the Cossacks died from hunger and disease, and sent the 9th plastun (infantry) and 1st joint cavalry regiments as well as the first Leib Guards (elite) sotnia to aid the Russian Army in the Patriotic War of 1812. Further participations of the new host was in the Russo-Persian War (1826-1828) where they stormed the last remaining Ottoman bastion of the northern Black Sea Coast, the fortress of Anapa, which fell on June 12, 1828. In the course of the Crimean War, the Cossacks foiled attempts by allied forces to land on the Taman Peninsula, whilst the 2nd and 5th plastun battalions took part in the heroic Defence of Sevastopol.

As the years went by the Black Sea Cossacks continued its systematic penetrations into the mountainous regions of the Northern Caucasus. Taking an active part in the finale of the Russian conquest of the Northern Caucasus they settled the regions each time these were conquered. To aid them, a total of 70 thousand additional ex-Zaporozhians from the Bug, Yekaterinoslav, and finally the Azov Cossack Host migrated there in the mid 19th century. All three of the former were necessary to be removed to vacate space for the colonisation of New Russia, and with the increasing weakness of the Ottoman Empire as well as the formation of independent buffer states in the Balkans, the need for further Cossack presence has ended. They made the migration to the Kuban in 1860 and merged with the Caucasus Line Cossack Host, which consisted of migrated Don Cossack elements. Finally in 1864, the Black Sea Cossacks and the Azov Cossacks were united into the Kuban Cossack Host, ninety years after the Zaporozhian Sich was destroyed.

References

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