
Yermak Timofeyevich (1542-6 August 1585) was a Russian Cossack ataman and the chief leader of the Russian conquest of Siberia during the 1580s.
Biography[]
Yermak Timofeyevich was born on the eastern fringes of the Grand Duchy of Moscow to a Cossack family, the grandson of a coachman from Suzdal and the son of a merchant who settled along the Chusovaya River. Yermak worked as a porter for the Stroganov family's merchant fleet before becoming a river pirate on the Don River. He led a Cossack detachment for the Tsar in the Livonian War and plundered merchant ships on the Volga before the Stroganov family enlisted his help in 1582, calling on him to lead his Cossacks to punish the Tatar Khanate of Sibir for its raids on Perm. Yermak led 540 Russians, Tatars, Lithuanians, and Germans, plus 300 of the Stroganov family's men, into Siberia and sailed down icy rivers in high-sided boats. In late 1582, Yermak's gunpowder-wielding men defeated a much larger Tatar horde at the Battle of Chuvash Cape, destroying the Tatar fortress of Qashliq before befriending the Ostyak people to obtain supplies for the conquest of the rest of Siberia. Ivan the Terrible proclaimed Yermak to be a hero of the first degree for his actions in Siberia, forgiving his past banditry. In 1583, he extended the Tsar's dominion east of Qashliq at the expense of the Nogai Tatars. However, the Siberian khan Kuchum continued to resist Yermak, and, on 6 August 1585, he was ambushed by Tatars while heading to rescue a group of captured traders. Yermak's boats were destroyed in a storm and Yermak wounded in the arm with a knife, and, as Yermak attempted to swim across the river, he was weighed down by the armor gifted to him by the Tsar and drowned.