5 Figures Who Established Their Own "States"

Over the past decade, much attention has been drawn to the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) – a private army of the military criminal and terrorist, Russian national Yevgeny Prigozhin. Illegally operating in the Central African Republic (CAR) and several other African countries, as well as in Syria and notably in Ukraine, where it played a pivotal role in establishing the separatist quasi-state of the "Donetsk People's Republic" (DPR). In the year 2023, dictator Vladimir Putin publicly acknowledged that the Russian state had sponsored Wagner's crimes. Today, we remember five historical figures with their own armies, enabling them to control significant territories and even create unrecognized "states."

Cesare Borgia (1475-1506)

Photo: Cesare Borgia, Source: Wikipedia

Cesare Borgia, the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI, was groomed for a religious career from childhood – he became a cardinal at the age of 18. However, after the death of his brother, the chief commander of the papal forces, he shed his ecclesiastical role and hastened to fill the vacant position. The Church's territory, known as the Papal States, at that time occupied a rather modest space in the central part of modern Italy, but the popes never ceased to dream of its expansion. Gathering a 16,000-strong army of mercenaries and Swiss infantrymen, Cesare set out in 1499 to the north, to the historical region of Romagna, to conquer the local principalities. Although these principalities were part of the Papal States, they behaved quite independently and even neglected to pay tribute to the Pope, which served as a pretext for a power reshuffle. For several years, Cesare's endeavors were successful; he captured city after city, earned the title of Duke of Romagna, and reached an agreement with his father that the seized lands would be transformed into his personal monarchical state, not subject to papal authority.

However, in 1503, Cesare's allies began to seriously fear that the insatiable duke would reach their domains, and they conspired to assassinate him. The plan failed; Cesare captured and executed the conspirators. Nevertheless, in the same year, both he and his father fell ill from poisoning. His father, the Pope, passed away, while Cesare was incapacitated for several months. The heir to the throne, Pope Pius III, had a loyal attitude towards Cesare, but he also died just 26 days later. The next pontiff, Julius II, stripped the ailing Cesare of his position as gonfalonier, arrested him, and compelled him to surrender all the captured castles to the papacy – essentially to himself.

By the end of 1506, Cesare managed to escape imprisonment under the protection of his brother-in-law, King John III of Navarre. The king appointed him as a military commander, endowed him with a 10,000-strong army, and entrusted him with suppressing a rebellion in the municipality of Viana. This became Cesare Borgia's final military campaign: in 1507, he besieged the castle of the defiant Count of Lerin, but fell into a trap set by its defenders and was struck down by a spear.

Jean Lafitte (1780-1823)

Photo: Jeane Lafitte, Source: Wikipedia

Jean Lafitte, one of the last legendary pirates, claimed that his ancestors were Jewish. The birthplace of Lafitte and his elder brother Pierre remains a mystery – it could have been either France or its colonies – Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) or New France (Louisiana). The Lafitte brothers embarked on their careers in 1805: Pierre smuggled contraband goods by sea to New Orleans, while Jean traded them from the warehouse. After a couple of years, the Lafittes settled on creating a new base on Barataria Island in the bay of the same name. Here, goods were unloaded and discreetly transported to New Orleans on boats without notice from customs. By 1812, the brothers grew dissatisfied with their intermediary roles; they acquired a schooner and, under the flag of neutral Cartagena, began seizing and plundering smugglers' ships, keeping those that could be armed with cannons. Selling the captured slaves and goods made them wealthy. Jean Lafitte operated without a privateering license, and according to the tax authorities, he gained riches unlawfully. However, the US Navy refrained from engaging his fleet for two years, and he himself rejected accusations of piracy. The situation changed with the war declared by the US against Britain. King George III attempted to sway Lafitte's forces to his side, but Lafitte declined. Nevertheless, the authorities in Louisiana distrusted the pirate and decided to neutralize him by destroying Barataria. Lafitte's fleet was captured in the bay, but he managed to escape.

Yet, without the buffer of Barataria, New Orleans became a vulnerable target for the British. General Andrew Jackson proposed a pardon for Lafitte and his men if they joined the defense forces. When the Barataria troops aided in repelling the British attack, the authorities indeed dropped all charges against them. But the Lafitte brothers grew restless without action. In the spring of 1817, they returned to their old ways, this time on Galveston Island in Texas. Spanish King Ferdinand VII graciously ceded the island to the Lafittes in exchange for regular intelligence reports on events in New Orleans. The brothers established a large colony there, naming it "Campeche." At its peak, it housed 2,000 people who pledged loyalty to Jean. Lafitte plundered slave ships and sold the living cargo to smugglers. For several years, he lived a lavish life. However, in 1821, Spain lost Texas, and the American Navy advised the Lafitte brothers to find another base. Jean and his diminished forces did not contest, instead they set fire to all the structures in Campeche and sailed away on their ships. Further information about the Lafittes is scarce. It's believed that Pierre soon fell ill and died, while Jean and his reduced crew continued piracy in the Gulf of Mexico for a couple more years until he was killed in a firefight with Spanish ships.

Manuel Lozada (1828-1873)

Photo: Manuel Lozada, Source: Balto-slavica.org

Following the attainment of independence, the Mexican Republic was plagued by over half a century of political instability. Only "caudillos" – strong leaders – could hold onto power for a significant period, asserting their authority through money or force. Typically, these caudillos were military figures, but the case of Manuel Lozada from the western state of Jalisco stands apart – he was a bandit. Illiterate and of mestizo descent, Lozada, a former mule driver, took an interest in his employer's daughter and was repeatedly imprisoned in the city of Tepic. Eventually, he fled with the young woman to the mountains. The city's police chief punished his mother when he sought the fugitive. In response, Manuel assembled a gang of similarly aggrieved indigenous people, staged an ambush in Mariles, and brutally killed his tormentor. In a year, the gang grew from 6 to 50 members, sparking an unprecedented wave of terror in the region – attacks on ranches and estates owned by the local elite, arson, kidnappings, coach robberies, acts of brutality, and rape. Lozada's gang operated without restraint; after raids, they would hide in the mountainous Department of Álica. Initially, the gang consisted of deserters, escaped criminals, and former soldiers, but Lozada later began recruiting peasants. At the right moment, men from each village were obliged to heed his orders. Farmers and freight carriers from the nearby port of San Blas were taxed, and those deemed disloyal faced execution.

By 1859, Lozada's semi-virtual army had grown to several thousand warriors (peaking at 20,000). He defeated and disbanded government troops, captured Tepic, and ruled the region for over a decade, governing through one of the local oligarchic families. In 1861, French forces invaded Mexico with the aim of making it a colony, and Lozada agreed to aid them with his troops. After the French intervention failed, Manuel shifted his allegiance back to Mexico, supporting the Mexican Republic and negotiating a special federal jurisdiction for his region. Nevertheless, he continued to disregard any orders from above. Liberal General Ramón Corona, who had lost most battles against the bandit, yearned to settle the score, but President Benito Juárez was in no hurry to shed more blood. Corona obtained authorization to eliminate the "Tiger of Álica" (el Tigre de Álica) only from Juárez's successor. In 1873, leading a 10,000-strong army to Tepic, Corona defeated Lozada's forces, caught the fleeing caudillo in the mountains, captured him, and executed him without trial. However, Manuel Lozada's separatist policies to a large extent aligned with the interests of the indigenous population, and Tepic continued to resist central authority for many years. This eventually culminated in 1917, when the canton achieved sovereign status and peacefully separated from Jalisco, forming the new state of Nayarit.

Nestor Makhno (1888-1934)

Photo: Nestor Makhno, Source: Wikipedia

Nestor Makhno was born in the Ukrainian town of Huliaipole into a peasant family. While working at an iron foundry, he became passionate about anarchism. At the age of 20, he miraculously escaped the noose for killing a tsarist official and ended up in a Moscow prison, where prominent anarchist Peter Arshinov taught him to read, write, do arithmetic, study history, and learn French. After the February Revolution and the amnesty of 1917, Makhno returned to Huliaipole and formed the combat unit "Black Guard," with which he began seizing land from landowners and distributing it among peasants. This earned him the people's sympathy and the nickname "Bat’ko" ("Father"). Soon, the tsarist regime in Russia was overthrown, and Ukraine attempted to establish its independence from both the "White" monarchist counter-revolutionaries and the "Red" Bolsheviks of the new Russian government. The views of the anarchist-communist Makhno, who advocated the redistribution of property and regional self-governance without submission to centers in Moscow or Kyiv, resonated with the peasants. By 1919, his army had grown to tens of thousands of rebels, controlling a territory roughly the size of Belgium. Makhno had a sense of humor – during village raids, his forces often disguised themselves as wedding processions, with Nestor himself sometimes portraying the bride. Yet, he could also be ferocious: there's a well-known incident where he ordered a priest to be burned alive in a locomotive's firebox for attempting to frighten the partisans with "hellfire."

The turmoil in Huliaipole led to clashes not only with the "White" and "Red" forces but also with the Ukrainian authorities seated in Kyiv, as all these factions sought to curtail his independent politics. In the fall of 1919, the unstable Kyiv government essentially disintegrated, shattering the idea of an independent Ukraine for many years. Nestor promptly proclaimed a "peasant republic" centered in Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro), free from both monarchist and Bolshevik influence, and issued his own currency. While he didn't reject the possibility of cooperating with the Bolsheviks against the monarchists, he believed that the "Reds" were incapable of fair political competition, making any alliances with them only temporary measures. The "Reds" responded to his criticisms in kind, periodically smearing "Bat'ko" in newspapers. The "Whites" considered him a common bandit living for his own pleasure.

In the autumn of 1920, Makhno agreed to assist the Red Army by allocating a portion of his insurgents to dislodge General Wrangel's White Guard troops from Crimea. Ridding themselves of a common enemy benefited both allies. However, their paths diverged after the fall of the monarchist-held Crimea: the Bolsheviks turned machine guns on the Makhnovists. The uncontrollable separatist, who refused to integrate into the red empire, had no use for them. Immense forces were dispatched to completely eradicate his partisan "republic." Struggling to evade encirclement and death, Nestor spent nearly a year evading pursuit, sustaining twelve wounds along the way, while his formidable army dwindled to less than a hundred. Through Romania, Poland, and Germany, he eventually reached Paris, where he spent the remainder of his days writing essays on anarchism. In 1934, he succumbed to tuberculosis he had contracted during his youth in a tsarist prison. A year before his death, the Bolsheviks definitively crushed the backbone of the defiant Ukrainian peasantry, subjecting the seized territories to a man-made famine that claimed millions of lives.

Abdul Rashid Dostum (1954-...)

Photo: Abdul Rashid Dostum, Source: Wikipedia

Abdul Rashid Dostum was born into a poor Uzbek-Turkmen family in the northern part of the Kingdom of Afghanistan. At the age of 16, he started working at a gas processing plant and later became involved in labor activism. After the monarchy was overthrown, he joined the armed forces, became a member of the pro-Soviet party, and went for further education to Tashkent and Moscow. Meanwhile, internal political tensions in the country led to a civil war, supported by various foreign powers. Returning from Moscow, in the 1980s, Colonel Dostum commanded the 53rd division of the government's army, which predominantly consisted of ethnic Uzbeks. After the withdrawal of Soviet troops, he was promoted to the rank of general.

Following the end of Soviet support, Afghanistan faced challenges and a new wave of civil war erupted as Islamic mujahideen attacked the country after the collapse of the USSR, leading to disruption in fuel and ammunition supplies. In April 1992, Dostum, commanding a military garrison in Kabul, ousted the pro-Soviet leader Mohammad Najibullah and allowed mujahideen to enter the capital. Afghanistan quickly descended into chaos with a new civil war. Dostum led his 40,000-strong army, mostly composed of Uzbeks, to the north of the country, and he controlled four provinces, informally creating a territory known as "Dostumistan." The city of Mazar-i-Sharif became the capital of this quasi-state, where its own currency was printed, and an airline called "Balkh Air" operated civilian flights to Uzbekistan.

Over the next four years, Dostum continued to switch allies, forming alliances with various factions. However, in 1997, the radical "Taliban" movement drove him out of Mazar-i-Sharif and into the border regions. In 1998, the Taliban captured the entire territory, marking the end of "Dostumistan."

Nevertheless, in 2001, the Americans saw potential in Dostum to help fight against the Taliban. With U.S. support, he regained control over the northern part of the country. Over the next two decades, he actively participated in politics, survived an assassination attempt, acquired opulent palaces in different cities, and held the position of the first vice president, becoming Afghanistan's only marshal. However, the withdrawal of American forces and a new Taliban offensive led to the defeat of his forces. In 2021, Dostum fled the country, presumably to Uzbekistan or Turkey, and his current whereabouts remain unknown.