|
|
From tribe to monarchy--The coming
of the Romans--Christianity and the growth of feudalism--The rise of the Bagratid dynaso-The Mongol
yoke--Ottoman Turkey and Safavi Persia--Rapprochement
with Russia--Collapse
of the monarchy--The Russians take over
From tribe to monarchy
THE INSTITUTION of monarchy in Georgia stretches back into
remote antiquity. In the age of myth and legend, Jason and his Argonauts are
said to have found Colchis, the presentday Mingrelia and Imereti, ruled by King Aietes,
father of the sorceress Medea; through her magic
lore, the Greeks gained possession of the Golden Fleece. Legends such as this
combine with the findings of archaeology to imply the existence in Western Georgia from time immemorial of petty
monarchies, governed in a simple patriarchal fashion.
The other main region of Georgia
known to the ancients-Caucasian Iberia--lay
to the east of Colchis, across the Surami range; Iberia
included the modern Kartli and Kakheti,
together with Samtskhe and other regions to the
south-west. In Iberia was
situated the ancient capital city of MtskhetaArmazi,
a short distance up the River Kura from the modern metropolis of Tbilisi. Armazis-tsikhe, the Greek Harmozika,
signifies 'castle
of Armazi',
and took its name from the local embodiment of the Zoroastrian deity Ahura-Mazda. Thanks to its strategic position at the
confluence of the rivers Kura and Aragvi, Mtskheta-Armazi became
the chief city in the land. The Georgian chronicle tells us that the chiefs
and patriarchs of the tribes vied for control of it: 'He who possessed Mtskheta stood above all the others, for the city of Mtskheta
was greater than the other towns, and it was called
the Mothercity.'
During the last five centuries before the Christian era,
general progress in agriculture and trade, in metal-working and in building
techniques, led to the emergence in Iberia of a relatively advanced social
order. Towns and villages sprang up. Wide differences in wealth and status
declared themselves and became perpetuated from one generation to another.
Besides the kings themselves, there were provincial magnates and tribal
chiefs, men of substance and power. This is demonstrated by such finds as the
Akhalgori hoard, discovered in the river Ksani valley, and dating from some four hundred years
before Christ. The articles of great magnificence, fashioned in gold, silver
and bronze, which make up this hoard, were consigned to the earth along with
the body of a prominent local grandee.
The
coming of the Romans
The campaigns of Pompey brought the Georgians into the
Roman sphere of influence. The Romans, according to the geographer Strabo,
found Iberia
a rich, thickly populated land, divided into two climatic and economic
zones--the mountainous uplands and the low-lying river valleys. The
highlanders, who composed the majority of the population, made their living
by rearing sheep, horses and cattle, and formed the backbone of the Iberian
armed forces. The lowlanders engaged in agriculture and in tending orchards
and vineyards. The towns were walled and contained markets and public
buildings with roofs, all constructed on approved architectural principles.
According to Strabo, Iberian society was divided into four
main classes. The first was made up of the royal family, the senior member of
which occupied the throne, while the second in rank administered justice and
commanded the army. The next class was that of the priests, who also served
as diplomats and councillors of state. The third
category was that of the free farmers, herdsmen and warriors. The fourth was
made up of the lower orders of the common people, comprising, so it seems,
serf labourers on the royal estates, domestic
slaves, prisoners of war and so forth. Strabo tells us nothing about the
aristocracy, the knights and the high officers of state, of whose existence
contemporary inscriptions provide definite evidence. Nor has he anything to
say about a Georgian merchant and artisan class, perhaps because this was
composed of Jews, Syrians, Persians, Greeks and other foreigners.
The presence of Roman garrisons and officials had farreaching effects on Georgia's social and economic
life. The Georgians became acquainted with manners and customs, products and
techniques, of which they had previously no conception. The building of roads
gave the country access to markets in Asia Minor and other parts of the Roman Empire. The kings of Iberia became 'friends and allies
of the Roman people'. As shown by an inscription of Vespasian discovered near
Mtskheta, the Romans sent engineers there to build
fortifications against the Parthians, Scythians and
other common enemies. Colchis to the west
was reduced to an even more subservient position. Roman legionaries were
stationed in the main ports and strategic points around the Black
Sea coast.
At the same time, the Iberians retained their traditional
cultural links with Iran,
then ruled by the Parthian dynasty of the Arsacids, sworn foes of the Romans. Symptomatic of the
mingled Iranian and Greco-Roman influences on the life and habits of the
Georgian upper classes are the names borne by the Iberian kings and higher
dignitaries during this period. Alongside Iranian names like Parnavaz, Farasmanes (Farsman), Ksefarnug and Asparukh, we encounter an impeccable Roman name like Publicius Agrippa, and even hybrid forms such as Flavius Dades.
Under the later Roman emperors, Roman power in the east
fell into decay. With the rise of the Sassanids in Iran during the third century A.D., Iranian
political supremacy over Eastern Georgia
became marked. With this went an increased attachment to the Zoroastrian
religion. As evidence of this, one may cite two interesting Sassanian silver dishes discovered in Georgia at Armazi
and Bori respectively: each portrays the
sacrificial figure of a horse standing before the ritual fire altar.
Christianity
and the growth of feudalism
A new phase in Georgian history opened with the country's
conversion to Christianity by Saint Nino about the year 330, during the reign
of Constantine the Great. The adoption of the Christian faith had momentous
consequences for the entire nation, which became an outer bulwark of
Christendom in the pagan Orient. Christianity imparted to the people a unity
which transcended the political vicissitudes arising from the struggle of the
great powers for mastery of the Near East-a struggle in the course of which Georgia
was repeatedly invaded and partitioned by Persians and Greeks, by Arabs,
Turks and Mongols.
Modern historians of the Marxist school connect the
adoption of Christianity with the decline of a slave-owning economy in Georgia,
and the coming into existence of a society based on feudal principles. There
remains, however, some doubt as to the dominant role of slave labour in the ancient Iberian and Colchian
economies. Unlike the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians or even the neighbouring Armenians, the Georgians of antiquity never
succeeded in overrunning large tracts of territory whose inhabitants could be
led away wholesale into slavery. Nor do we have the impression of an urban
society on the scale of Athens or Rome, where every
citizen of substance was attended by scores of slaves, and entrepreneurs made
a handsome living by leasing out thousands of slave labourers
to mine operators and industrial contractors. That there were rich and poor,
high and low, in ancient Georgia
is shown beyond doubt by the archaeological evidence. That
prisoners of war were used as forced labourers,
that domestic slavery existed in the households of the great, is hardly open
to question. But it is highly probable that the bulk of the people were free
husbandmen and herdsmen, some with their own clan organization, or else
vassals or serfs of the king or leading nobles. It has yet to be proved that
chattel slaves were a dominant factor in the economy and the social order.
It would seem more logical to regard the emergence of a
feudal monarchy in Georgia
as the natural outcome of the patriarchal rule of the ancient Georgian mamasakhlisni, or 'fathers of the house', as the
tribal chiefs of old were called. We have already spoken of the struggle
between these heads of tribes for possession of the city of Mtskheta, control
of which conferred supremacy on its owner. The Georgian chronicle speaks of
the ruler of Mtskheta appointing nine dukes or eristavs ('heads of the people'), who were
simultaneously civil governors and military heads of their respective
provinces. These eristavs were an agency
whereby the kings could keep in order the old territorial nobility of the mtavars or hereditary princes. The latter,
naturally enough, did their best to resist any undue extension of the royal
prerogative. Beneath the great nobles and the viceroys of the king came the
class of the gentry and the knights, vassals of the princes or of the king
himself. The knights in turn had suzerainty over their peasants, whom they
would lead into battle when the summons came. This, in broad outline, is the
social structure of which a fifth-century writer gives us a glimpse when he
speaks of 'the grandees and noble ladies, the gentry and common folk of the land of Georgia'. 12
Historians have been struck by the resemblance between the
social and political structure which prevailed in Georgia
virtually up to the Russian occupation in 1801, and the feudal institutions
of mediaeval Europe. It has even been
conjectured that Georgia's
feudal system might owe something to the influence of the Crusaders. But it
is clear that the roots of Georgian feudalism can be traced back to a far
earlier epoch. Analogies should rather be sought in Byzantium
and in Sassanian Iran. Under the Sassanian kings, the royal power rested on a delicate
balance between feudal allegiances and bureaucratic absolutism. Under the
supreme authority of the Iranian king of kings was a motley assemblage of
vassal kings, provincial satraps and chiefs of clans, some hereditary
dynasts, and others viceroys appointed by the king. Beneath these were ranged
the nobles and knights, some vassals of the great princes, others of the
sovereign himself. At the lower end of the scale came the peasants, who
followed their lords into battle and formed the rank and file of the Persian
army. 13
While the Georgian monarchy was on a far smaller scale and possessed
individual features of its own, there are manifest similarities between the structure of the two states, which existed for centuries
side by side.
During the later Sassanian
period, the Iberian monarchy was weakened both by civil strife and by the
struggle between Byzantium and Iran for dominion over the Caucasus.
This decline had become so marked by the time of the Persian king, Khusrau I (531-79), that the Persians were able to
abolish the monarchy and assert direct control over Georgia's internal affairs. For
the next three centuries, hereditary magnates ruled over each province under
the supervision of governors appointed by the Great Kings of Iran and the
Byzantine emperors, and later, after about A.D. 650, by the Arab caliphs.
The
rise of the Bagratid dynasty
While the Georgian monarchy was in abeyance, a new and
virile ruling family was rising to prominence in the marchlands of Georgia and Armenia. This was the clan of the
Bagratids, who were to unify Georgia under a single crown and
reign there for a thousand years. Although the Bagratids
claimed for prestige purposes to be descended from David and Solomon of
Israel, they were in reality princes of Speri (Ispir), in the Upper Chorokhi
valley north of Erzurum, and had a castle at the modern Bayburt.
The family first attained the highest dignities of state in the Armenian
kingdom, and then spread into Georgia.
Towards the end of the eighth century, Ashot the
Great settled at Artanuji in Tao, south-western
Georgia, receiving from the Byzantine emperor the title of Kuropalates or 'Guardian of the Palace'. As time
went on, Ashot profited by the relative weakness of
the emperors at Constantinople and the Arab caliphs of Baghdad,
and set himself up as hereditary prince in Iberia.
From then on, the unification of the Georgian lands
proceeded apace. In 1008, Bagrat III became king of
a united Eastern and Western Georgia, having inherited Iberia from his father, and Abasgia (as Western Georgia
was then called) through his mother. Excluded from his dominions was the
capital city of Tbilisi,
still ruled by independent Muslim amirs, the
Ja'farids. Tbilisi
fell at last to King David the Builder ( 1089-1125),
who was aided by the arrival of the Crusaders in the Near
East, and the consequent demoralization of the Saracens. David
won victories over the Seljuk Turks and annexed large tracts of the former
Armenian kingdom. In this way there was erected the imposing structure of the
Georgian monarchy, a veritable Caucasian empire, exercising suzerainty over
the Muslim kingdom of Shirvan on the Caspian Sea
and later, over the Christian realm of Trebizond on the Black Sea-an empire
renowned for its political and military might, its cultural efflorescence and
its economic prosperity.
The zenith of Georgia's power and prestige was
reached under Queen Tamar ( 1184-1213). This was Georgia's
heroic age. The Georgian realm was a political organism of considerable
complexity. The monarch ruled by the doctrine of divine right. The existence
of strong feudal institutions prevented the royal power from degenerating
into sheer despotism. Indeed, there was a movement at the outset of Tamar's
reign to limit the royal prerogative by setting up a kind of House of Lords
with authority equal to that of the sovereign. Unlike the efforts of the
English barons under Tamar's contemporary, King John, this Georgian
constitutional movement came to naught. Nevertheless, the power of the great
nobles and ecclesiastics who sat upon the royal council of state had always
to be reckoned with, as had that of the provincial tribal chieftains.
The central administration was headed by five vazirs or ministers: the High Chancellor (an office long
associated with the dignity of Archbishop of Tchqondidi),
the War Minister, the Lord Chamberlain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and
the Atabag or High Constable, each with a staff
of subordinate officials. The eristavs or
dukes who ruled the provinces were nominally viceroys, removable at will by
the sovereign. In practice, once a province had been governed for generations
by the same princely family, it was hard for the monarch to dislodge such
vassals without provoking open strife.
The rulers of mediaeval Georgia, who were proud to style
themselves 'Servants of the Messiah', were very conscious of their role as
bulwarks of Christendom against the infidel nations. The Orthodox Church of
Georgia bulked large in the country's life, and battling bishops led their
troops into the fray alongside the armies of the king. The Church had wide
powers of jurisdiction over morals and private conduct, a monopoly in the
field of education, as well as enormous economic privileges, grants of land,
and valuable immunities and benefactions. The kings themselves submitted
philosophically to ecclesiastical censure when they happened to overstep the
bounds of decorum: thus, Ashot the Great was once soundly
castigated for his moral lapses by a mother superior. 'In spirit he rejoiced
because wisdom had conquered pernicious weakness; in a pure heart he revered
the blessed ones who had bestowed on his soul the crown of eternal
salvation.' 14
By a rational division of authority between Church and State, the
Georgian kings avoided both the Byzantine and Muscovite system of Caesaro-papism, and the unresolved conflicts which often
wrought havoc in Western Christendom, leading on occasion to such tragedies
as the murder of Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.
It was in Tamar's time that the Georgian feudal system
reached its apogee. Fiefs and arrière fiefs,
allodium and immunity, vassalage, investiture and homage--all these familiar
terms of Western feudalism had their equivalents in the social system of
mediaeval Georgia.
The nation could be divided into the categories of patroni,
or lord, and qma, which meant either vassal
or serf according to context and social position. The term patroni was employed to denote both protector and
master. A nobleman, logically enough, would normally be a patroni
in regard to his peasants, and a qma, or
vassal, in the eyes of his suzerain prince or king.
This hierarchical division of Georgian society is
strikingly exemplified in the official table of wergild or blood money
rates, drawn up at the beginning of the eighteenth century by King Vakhtang VI. Though compiled relatively late, this table
includes data handed down from earlier periods.
At the top of the scale are the king and the CatholicosPatriarch of Georgia. Both of them are accorded
equivalent status as heads of the temporal and spiritual orders of the nation
respectively. No sum of blood money is prescribed to be exacted from a man
slaying either of them, for such a crime was punished as high treason, by
execution. The princes and dukes were divided into three classes. The highest
class, the didebulni or grandees, were
equated with archbishops of the rank of Metropolitan. If slain by an
individual of equal rank, the blood money payable in respect of a prince or
archbishop of the first class amounted to 1,536 tomans,
equivalent in King Vakhtang's time to 15,360 silver
rubles. The lesser nobility or squirearchy (aznaurni) were likewise
divided into three categories. The highest of these was assessed at 192 tomans, also the blood money of an abbot. The lowest
grade mentioned in Vakhtang's table is that of
peasant or small tradesman, for whom the wergild payable was 12 tomans.
These figures represent the amount of indemnity payable by
an assassin to the relatives of his victim, in cases where an individual was
slain by another of his own social standing. But if a peasant or squire
killed someone of a higher grade, then he would have to pay at least one and
a half times the basic rate, and probably suffer some other form of
punishment in addition. In cases of wounding, abduction of a wife, and other
forms of insult or injury, full wergild or a fixed portion of it would
be payable by way of compensation to the injured party.
Another remarkable feature of Georgian judicial procedure
was the system of ordeals. These no doubt derived from those practised in ancient Iran; they also have features in
common with the ordeals so familiar in Western Christendom. In Georgia, the
presumed guilt or innocence of an accused party was established by single
combat; by the ordeals of boiling water and red-hot iron; by solemn oath on
an icon; and by an odd ceremony known as saddling oneself with sin, in which
the accused took the plaintiff upon his back and declared: 'May God hold me
responsible for thy sins at the Last Judgement, and
may I be judged in thy place, if this deed has really been committed by me.' 15 These
ordeals continued in use right up to the eighteenth century.
The
Mongol yoke
The invasions of Transcaucasia
by the Mongols from A.D. 1220 onwards brought the Golden Age of Georgia to an
abrupt end. The country was reduced to vassalage under the Mongol Il-khans of
the line of Hulagu Khan. In the fourteenth century,
there were signs of a national revival. The onslaughts of Tamerlane created
great havoc in Georgia's
economic and cultural life, from which the kingdom never fully recovered. The
countryside was strewn with the ruins of churches, castles and towns, the
people fled to the hills, and once busy roads were overgrown with grass and
bushes.
The last king of united Georgia was Alexander I
(1412-43), under whose sons the realm split up into squabbling princedoms.
The disintegration of the monarchy was further aggravated by the fall of
Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, and the resulting isolation of Georgia from
Western Christendom. The Black Sea became a Turkish lake, and the land routes
from the Caucasus to the Mediterranean and the West through Anatolia and Syria were
all in enemy hands.
The Bagratid royal family was
now divided into three branches. The senior line ruled at Tbilisi
over the kingdom of Kartli; a second ruled
over Western Georgia or Imereti--'the land on the
far side'; a third possessed Kakheti, Georgia's
most easterly province. Five princely families took advantage of this
break-down of the central monarchy to set themselves up as independent
dynasts on their own. These were the Jaqelis of Samtskhe in the south-west; the Dadianis
of Mingrelia, which comprised a large part of
ancient Colchis; the Gurielis in Guria, on the Black Sea immediately south of Mingrelia; the Sharvashidzes in
Abkhazia, on Georgia's
north-western Black Sea fringe; and the Gelovanis
in highland Svaneti among the peaks of the Caucasus range.
Ottoman
Turkey and Safavi Persia
This political fragmentation rendered Georgia powerless to resist the designs of
Ottoman Turkey and Safavi Persia, who now vied for control over Caucasia. In 1510 the Turks invaded Imereti
and sacked the capital, Kutaisi.
Not long afterwards, Shah Ismail Safavi of Iran
invaded Kartli--a foretaste of many onslaughts which
the land was to suffer at the hands of this dynasty of Persian rulers.
From the north, the Grand Princes of Muscovy had already
begun their drive towards the Caspian Sea
and the North Caucasian steppe. In 1492, King Alexander of Kakheti sent an embassy of friendship to Ivan III of Moscow. After Kazan and Astrakhan
had fallen to Ivan the Terrible in 1552 and 1556 respectively, the Tsar sent
King Levan of Kakheti a
Cossack bodyguard and took him under Russian protection. Threats and protests
from the Shah of Persia soon led to the Cossacks being withdrawn. However,
the Grebensky and Terek
Cossack settlements in the North Caucasian steppe became an important factor
in Caucasian politics. In 1594, Tsar Fedor Ivanovich sent an army to seize the strategic fortress of
Tarku in Daghestan,
capital of the dynasty of the Shamkhals. This, and
subsequent expeditions, ended in disaster for the Russians. However, a
further Russian advance into Caucasia was
only a matter of time and opportunity.
During the closing decades of the sixteenth century, a
period of anarchy in Persia
enabled the Ottoman Turks to overrun the whole of Transcaucasia
and Persian Azerbaijan. Their triumph was short-lived. The Safavi dynasty in Persia soon rose to new heights
of power under the brilliant and ruthless Shah 'Abbas
I ( 1587-1629). The expulsion of the Turks from
Eastern Georgia by Shah 'Abbas was followed by a
reign of terror instituted by the Shah with a view to eliminating the more
vigorous Georgian princes, and turning the land into a Persian province. Many
thousands of the Christian population were deported
to distant regions of Iran,
where their descendants live to this day. The Dowager Queen of Kakheti, Ketevan, was given the
choice of abandoning the Christian faith and entering the Shah's harem, or of
a cruel martyrdom. She chose the latter fate, and is numbered among the
saints of the Georgian
Church.
It was only with the arrival in Tbilisi of Khusrau-Mirza, an illegitimate, renegade scion of the Bagratid royal line, that the country's wounds began to
heal. King Rostom, as Khusrau
was styled within Georgia,
was an elderly politician with an excellent knowledge of diplomacy and
considerable influence at the Persian court. Himself a Muslim, Rostom took to wife the daughter of a leading Georgian
aristocrat, and was married according to both Christian and Muslim rites. The
patriotic extremists, of course, regarded Rostom as
a traitor and resented his introduction of Persian ways--'luxury and high
living, dissipation and unchastity, dishonesty,
love of pleasure, baths and unseemly attire, lute and flute players', the
historian Prince Vakhushti disapprovingly termed
them. However, Rostom pursued undeterred his policy
of conciliation. 'Everywhere', as the French traveller
Chardin records, 'he reestablished peace and order,
and governed with much clemency and justice.' 16
While the Persians were establishing their rule over
Eastern Georgia, the Turks dominated Imereti and the
minor principalities of Western Georgia.
Without actually annexing these regions, they maintained a loose suzerainty
over them. From time to time, they would stage an invasion to dethrone some
disobedient prince and remind the people of the nearness of Ottoman power.
Otherwise they left the people of Imereti, Mingrelia and Guria very much
to their own devices, apart from levying a frequent tribute of male and
female Georgian slaves, who were highly prized in Turkey. Being mostly engaged in
civil wars among themselves, these minor kings and princes of Western Georgia
presented little danger to Turkey's
eastern frontiers.
Rapprochement with Russia
During the reign of King Rostom ( 1632-58) and his immediate successors, the Russian court
avoided becoming embroiled in military intervention in the Caucasus.
At the Kremlin, Tsar Alexis had plenty to occupy him in the way of tumult,
religious schism, and wars with his European neighbours.
Russia was also loth to relinquish the flourishing trade which she carried
on with Persia via the Caspian Sea. This did not mean that Russia lost
interest in Georgian affairs. Peaceful penetration was intense. The Dadian or reigning prince of Mingrelia
and the King of Imereti, both within the Turkish
zone of influence, were taken under nominal Russian suzerainty. Several
embassies were exchanged with King Teimuraz I of Kakheti, son of the martyred Queen Ketevan,
who visited Moscow
to appeal for Russian aid against the Persians. Community of faith led the
Russians, as the great Orthodox power in the East, to lend a sympathetic ear
to the pleas of the Georgians, while the latter, like the Balkan Slavs,
looked confidently to Christian Muscovy as a certain deliverer from the
Muslim yoke.
The consequences of this touching but misguided confidence
were seen most clearly during the reign of King Vakhtang
VI of Kartli, who governed at Tbilisi as regent
from 1703 until 1711, and then as king, with interruptions, until 1723. Vakhtang was one of the most gifted monarchs Georgia has produced; as patron of the arts
and sciences, he may be compared with the Renaissance princes of Italy. He
codified the laws, set up a commission to edit the national chronicles,
installed a printing press at Tbilisi, built
palaces, restored churches, dug canals for irrigation purposes, and generally
improved Georgia's
economic and social position. In 1721, the Caucasus
was suddenly affected by an international crisis. The Afghans of Qandahar had
revolted against the King of Persia, Shah Sultan Husayn,
and marched on Isfahan
from the east. From the north, Peter the Great of Russia cast covetous eyes
on Persia's Caspian
provinces and sent messengers to Tbilisi
to rally the Georgians to his banner. King Vakhtang
VI, whom the Shah had coerced into abjuring Christianity and embracing Islam,
responded with alacrity to the Tsar's overtures. When the Shah sent to him
for military help, Vakhtang refused, with the
result that Isfahan
fell to the Afghans in 1722 after a protracted siege in which scores of
thousands perished from hunger and wounds. Seeing Persia in chaos, the Turks
invaded from the west in 1723, Occupying Tbilisi. The Ottoman sultan
threatened war if the Russians sent help to the Georgians or entered the
Turkish occupation zone. Driven from his capital, Vakhtang
soon lost all hope of effective Russian support: 'While Peter plans to succour Paul, Paul is being skinned.' Eventually, the
Russians offered Vakhtang and his followers asylum; the Georgian king died in exile at Astrakhan in 1737.
This setback curtailed Russian influence in Georgia for
many years. The next serious rapprochement took place during the reign of Erekle II ( 1744-98), a
remarkable man who played in his youth a leading role in the campaigns of the
Persian conqueror Nadir Shah, whom he accompanied on his expedition to India
between 1737 and 1740. Nadir rewarded him in 1744 with the throne of Kakheti, while his father, Teimuraz
II, became King of Kartli. In 1762, Teimuraz II died while on a diplomatic mission to the
court of St. Petersburg. Erekle now combined Kartli and Kakheti into one
East Georgian kingdom. 'Nervous, brittle and intelligent in his small
tumbling world,' to use W. E. D. Allen's graphic phrase, the king 'felt out
this way and that for the bricks of some stability.' 17 He
strove to enlist the support of European powers, and to attract Western
scientists and technicians to give his country the benefit of the latest
military and industrial techniques. His vigilance in the care of his people
knew no bounds. On campaign, he would sit up at night watching for the enemy,
while in time of peace, he spent his life in transacting business of state or
in religious exercises, and devoted but a few hours to sleep.
Collapse
of the monarchy
The great scourge which afflicted Georgia
during Erekle's reign was the insecurity which
resulted from raids by Muslim tribesmen of Daghestan,
the Lezghis. These marauders were egged on by their
Turkish co-religionists just over the border. Georgian peasants could not
work at any distance from their dwellings for fear of attack by these
ruthless mountaineers, who pounced on their victims in the fields, or dragged
them from their huts to sell to the Turks and Persians. It has been reckoned
that these raids, together with the various local wars which took place in Georgia,
reduced the population by as much as a half during the eighteenth century. By
1800, the combined population of Eastern and Western
Georgia had sunk to less than half a million.
This state of affairs had a paralysing
effect on the development of industry. When Erekle
tried to start an iron foundry in the Borchalo
district, he had to close it down owing to the onslaughts of the Lezghis. Caravans of merchants were constantly being
waylaid and robbed. The economic situation was also adversely affected by
hostility between the Armenian moneyed class and the improvident Georgian
gentry. There was a steady outflow of much-needed capital from Georgia as the wealthier Armenian merchants
left Tbilisi and Gori
to make their headquarters in Moscow or Astrakhan.
In 1768, war broke out between Russia
and Turkey.
Catherine the Great decided to stage a military diversion against the Ottoman
Empire's frontier provinces in the Caucasus.
She sent to Georgia
an expeditionary force, commanded by a swashbuckling German adventurer named
Count von Todtleben. In conjunction with Erekle II and the King of Imereti,
Solomon I, the Russians scored a few successes over the Turks. However, Todtleben quarrelled with the
Georgian rulers, whom he despised as ignorant orientals,
and left them to bear the brunt of the fighting themselves. Relations between
Georgia and Russia were
subjected to great strain.
The
Russians take over
The estrangement between the courts of Tbilisi
and St. Petersburg
was eventually patched up, thanks largely to the vision of Catherine's favourite, Prince Gregory Potemkin. The empress and her
lover were aware of the important role which the Christian Georgians might be
made to play in furthering Russian designs to partition Persia and the Ottoman
Empire. The Georgians on their side entertained high hopes of
Russian military and economic aid. In 1783, a treaty between Russia and the Georgian kingdom of Kartlo-Kakheti was signed
at Georgievsk.
In signing the Treaty of Georgievsk,
Erekle undertook to renounce all dependence on
Persia or any other power but Russia; he and his posterity were solemnly
confirmed forever in possession of all territories under their sway; the
kings of Georgia, on succeeding to the throne, would request and receive from
St. Petersburg their insignia of investiture; Erekle
was to conduct negotiations with foreign powers only after securing the
approval of the Russian authorities; the empress and her heirs were pledged
to treat Georgia's foes as those of Russia; there was to be no interference
in the internal affairs of Georgia; the Georgian Catholicos-Patriarch
was given the eighth place among the Russian prelates, and made a member of
the Holy Synod; the Georgian nobility were to have the same prerogatives as
the Russian aristocracy; special facilities were to be afforded to Russian
traders in Georgia and to Georgian merchants in Russia. The treaty was to
remain in force permanently, and any modification was to be made only by the
voluntary consent of both parties. Four additional articles were appended to
the treaty. These provided among other things for the stationing in Georgia of two battalions of Russian infantry
with four cannon, and the eventual recovery by force of arms of Georgia's
ancient territories now in the hands of the Ottoman Turks. In making these
grandiose promises, Catherine and Potemkin overreached themselves. The only
line of direct communication between Georgia
and Russia was the
precarious military road over the main Caucasus
range via the Daryal pass, a route infested by
hostile tribes. The Turks and their allies, the Muslim warriors of Circassia
and Daghestan, were still entrenched in large areas
of North Caucasia. When Catherine's second
Turkish war broke out in 1787, it was decided, despite frantic protests from
the Georgians, that the Russian expeditionary force
should be withdrawn, and the Georgians left to their own devices.
The dire consequence of this decision was seen a few years
later, when a new dynasty, that of the Qajars,
seized power in Persia.
The head of this royal house, the eunuch Agha
Muhammad Khan, resolved to turn Georgia
once more into a province
of Persia. In vain did Erekle send appeal after appeal to the Empress Catherine
at St. Petersburg. The Russians, confronted with the French Revolution and
the resulting wars and upheavals in Europe,
had other problems to occupy their minds. In 1795, Agha
Muhammad and his savage hordes swooped down on Tbilisi. King Erekle,
in spite of his seventyfive years, took part in the
furious battle which raged before the gates of the city. The Georgians fought
like lions at bay, but were decimated and had to give way at last before the
overwhelming numbers of the foe. The king narrowly escaped capture, while Tbilisi was sacked and
burned by the triumphant Persians. To quote a contemporary, Sir John Malcolm:
'The conquerors entered Teflis:
a scene of carnage and rapine ensued pleasing to one who desired to make this
city an example for such as dared to contemn his authority. The Mahomedan historian of Aga Mohamed Khan, after describing
the barbarous and horrid excesses, observes, "that on this glorious
occasion the valiant warriors of Persia
gave to the unbelievers of Georgia
a specimen of what they were to expect on the day of judgement".
It is not easy to calculate the number who perished. Bigotry inflamed the
brutal rage of the soldier. The churches were levelled
to the ground; every priest was put to death. Youth and beauty were alone spared
for slavery. Fifteen thousand captives were led into bondage; and the army
marched back laden with spoil.' 18
The destruction of his capital city was a death blow to Erekle's dream of establishing, with Russian protection,
a strong and united Georgian kingdom, into which Imereti
and the lost provinces under Turkish rule would all eventually be drawn. The
old king died early in 1798.
The next three years were a time of muddle and confusion.
Georgian affairs were subjected to the imponderable whims of Tsar Paul I, the
crazy autocrat of Russia,
who had succeeded his mother Catherine in 1796. At Tbilisi little more than nominal power was
exercised by Erekle's son, King Giorgi
XII. This invalid monarch was beset by the intrigues of his stepmother, the
Dowager Queen Darejan, whose aim was to deprive Giorgi of the throne in favour
of one of her own numerous progeny. The king thus lived in constant fear of
being deposed or even murdered by his half-brothers, or of seeing yet another
Persian army invading his kingdom. In these circumstances, Giorgi was forced to the conclusion that something more
than a formal Russian protectorate was needed to ensure the kingdom's
survival. In September 1799, he sent an embassy to St.
Petersburg with instructions to surrender the realm of Eastern Georgia into the care of Tsar Paul--'not under
his protection, but into his full authority' --provided only that the royal
dignity should be preserved for ever in the Georgian royal family of the Bagratids. He was asking, that is to say, for a status
comparable to that of native rajahs under the British empire in India, or
that enjoyed by many sheikhs, amirs and sultans
during the French and British dominion over the Near and Middle East.
But even this modest remnant of autonomy was to be denied
to the Georgian kings and their subjects. Tsar Paul, it is true, at first
promised to guarantee certain privileges to King Giorgi
and the Georgian royal family. However, in November 1800, the emperor wrote
to the Russian general in command on the Caucasian front: 'The weakening of
the king's health gives ground for expecting his decease; you are therefore
immediately to despatch, as soon as this occurs, a
proclamation in Our name that until Our consent is received no action should
be taken even to nominate an heir to the Georgian throne.' 19 The
following month, Paul signed a manifesto declaring the kingdom of Kartlo-Kakheti annexed to the Russian crown.
Neither Tsar
Paul nor King Giorgi were
fated to see these measures put into effect. On 28 December 1800, before his
emissaries had returned from St.
Petersburg, Giorgi XII
died. The commandant of Russian troops in Tbilisi set up a temporary administration,
but on 15 January 1801, Giorgi's eldest son, Prince
David, declared himself Regent of Georgia. Before the succession problem
could be finally settled, Tsar Paul was himself assassinated in St. Petersburg during
the night of 11-12 March 1801.
The Georgian question confronted the new emperor,
Alexander I, with something of a dilemma. His more liberal advisers urged him
to repudiate his despotic father's policy of unilateral annexation which, as
they justly reminded him, contravened the Russo-Georgian treaty of 1783. In
their view, the perpetration of so flagrant a wrong against the Georgian
royal house would be a blot on the emperor's honour.
The difficulty was that the Georgians themselves were bitterly divided on the
succession to the throne. At Tbilisi, the
Dowager Queen Darejan incited her own sons to open
revolt against the Prince-Regent David, her stepson; one of Darejan's sons, Alexander Batonishvili,
even fled the country and offered his services to the new Shah of Persia, Fath-'Ali, successor of the eunuch Agha
Muhammad who had ravaged Georgia
only five years previously. This violent discord within the Bagratid house was adroitly utilized by some of Tsar
Alexander's less scrupulous intimates, who focused his attention on the rich
mineral resources of Georgia, on the country's vital military position as a
springboard for invasion of the Middle East, and strongly urged him not to
miss this unique opportunity of joining the land to the Russian empire.
After much high-minded vacillation, Alexander decided to
throw scruples to the winds. A manifesto couched in grandiose terms was drawn
up, announcing Eastern Georgia's annexation,
and repudiating any suggestion of self-interest on the Russian side. The Tsar
cited the defenceless state of Georgia, the
menace of civil war, the unanimous appeals which had been received from the
Christian population for protection against the Persians and Turks. Alexander
undertook to turn over the country's entire revenues to its own use, and to
preserve the rights and prerogatives of all classes of the community, except,
of course, those of the dethroned royal house. Each social order would have
the opportunity of taking an oath of allegiance to the emperor. This
manifesto was published in Moscow
on 12 September 1801, three days before Alexander's coronation. For over two
hundred years, the Tsars of Russia had styled themselves 'Lords of the
Iberian land and the Georgian kings'. Now this honorific title had become
reality with a vengeance; having entered voluntarily into the bear's embrace,
the kings of Georgia
now found the breath hugged out of them altogether.
Following the abolition of the Bagratid
monarchy of Kartlo-Kakheti in Eastern Georgia, the
liquidation of the branch of the dynasty ruling in Western
Georgia was only a matter of time. King Solomon II of Imereti defended his independence as long as he was able.
Taken under Russian suzerainty in 1804, Solomon later revolted and was
deposed and captured by armed force in 1810. The smaller independent
principalities of Western Georgia were
gradually absorbed into the administrative framework of the Caucasian
Viceroyalty. Guria was taken over in 1829, Mingrelia in 1857, Svaneti in
1858 and Abkhazia in 1864.
The decision of Tsars Paul and Alexander to destroy the
independence of a vassal monarchy which they were pledged to maintain was
morally indefensible, and was also to prove highly inexpedient in the longer
term. Nevertheless, it is certain that Georgia in 1801 was in no position
to stand on her own feet. With a population of only 500,000 or less, there
was no prospect of a resurrection of the old pan-Georgian monarchy of David
the Builder and Queen Tamar. With the royal family of Kartlo-Kakheti
convulsed by dynastic feuds and Western Georgia
perpetually agitated by civil strife, the disintegration of the state had
reached an advanced stage. The raids of the Lezghian
tribesmen and the depredations of the Persians and Turks rendered it
impossible to build up a viable national economy. Some form of close
association with Russia
--though not necessarily outright annexation--was clearly essential for the
sake of corporate physical survival. The Russia of Alexander I was not, by
Western standards, a liberal or a progressive state. But it was a European
power, with a European administration of sorts. Russian occupation turned the
eyes of the Georgians away from Muslim Asia and gave them a window on to Europe, with all the opportunities which that implied,
while the population of their country, surrounded by a ring of Russian
bayonets, increased eight-fold in a century and a half.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
20. See Russian
sources cited in D. M. Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, p. 254.
21. We follow the
version given by Colonel B. E. A. Rottiers, in his Itinéraire de Tiflis à Constantinople, Brussels 1829, pp.
73-83.
22. J.F. Baddeley, The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus, London 1908, p. 68.
23. Cited in D. M.
Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, p. 257.
24. D. M. Lang, The
Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, p. 259.
25. Rotfiers, Itiéraire
de Tiflis à Constantinople, pp. 94-95.
26. French
diplomatic archives, Quai d'Orsay, Paris,
as quoted in M. Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, pp. 263-65.
27. Sir Robert Ker Porter, Travels in Georgia,
Persia, etc., Vol. II,
London
1821-22, p. 521.
28. D. M. Lang, The
Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, pp. 267-68.
29. Quoted in Baddeley, The Russian Conquest of the Caucasm, p. 97.
30. Archives of
the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Quai d'Orsay, Paris,
Correspondance Commerdale,
Tiflis, Vol. I,
pp. 107-8.
31. See Sir
Bernard Pares, A History of Russia, revised edition, London 1947, p.
365; D. M. Lang, "The Decembrist Conspiracy through British Eyes",
in American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. VIII, No. 4,
December 1949, pp. 262-74.
32. D. M. Lang,
"Griboedov's Last Years in Persia", in American
Slavic and East European Review, Vol. VII, No. 4, December 1948, pp.
317-39.
33. W.E. D. Allen
and P. Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields: A
History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucadan Border,
1928-1921, Cambridge
1953, p. 21.
34. Rottiers, Itinéraire
de Tifiis à Constantinople,
p. 95.
35. Text in D. M.
Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, pp. 275-76.
36. See the text
of the report in the Akty or Collected
Documents of the Caucasian Archaeographical
Commission, Vol. VIII, Tbilisi 1881, pp. 1-13.
|
|
