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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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King Erekle (left)
and the Treaty of Georgievsk (Below)
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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.
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