General Knorring, the first governor, proceeded to the country with 10,000 men, and in the following year, under Tsar Alexander I., the annexation was confirmed. In 1803 Prince Tsitsishvili, a Georgian, succeeded Knorring. By his advice all the royal family were summoned to Russia, “in order to prevent civil dissensions,” and this removal was accompanied by a very unfortunate incident. Queen Maria, widow of Giorgi, refused to go; General Lazarev proceeded early one morning to the queen’s sleeping apartments with some soldiers and attempted to force her to accompany him; she killed him with a dagger which she had concealed under her dress, and her young son and daughter stabbed some of the soldiers. They were, of course, overpowered and carried off; at Dariel, in the narrowest part of the pass, a few Tagaur Ossets made a vain attempt at a rescue. Queen Maria was kept imprisoned in a convent at Voronezh for seven years, and never saw her native land again.
Tsitsishvili set himself to improve the condition of the country as much as possible. He began the military road over the Caucasus in 1804. He succeeded in persuading King Solomon of Imereti to acknowledge the Tsar as his suzerain, but Solomon soon began to intrigue with the Turks again. After taking Gandja by storm, and subduing a rising of the mountaineers under Pharnavaz and Iulon, sons of Irakli, Tsitsishvili marched against Baku, where he was treacherously murdered by the Khan of that city in 1806.
Count Gudovich was now appointed commander-in-chief, and his courtesy won for him the friendship of the Georgian people. Kakheti voluntarily submitted to his rule. He defeated the Turks in several battles, but was unsuccessful in his attack on Erivan, where he lost 2000 men. He was then recalled and made governor-general of Moscow. General Tormasov was the next ruler of Georgia, and he continued the war against the Turks, who were aided by King Solomon of Imereti. Poti was taken in 1810, and Princess Nina of Mingreli, who was allied to the Russians, herself led her troops to the assault. Sukhum was also taken. King Solomon was persuaded to go to a certain village in Kartli to sign a treaty of peace with Russia. The Russians treacherously seized him by night, and carried him off to prison in Tiflis, but he escaped in disguise, and fled to Akhaltsikhe, where he was received by the Turks with great honour. He returned to Imereti, and the whole country rose in his favour. There were revolts in Kakheti, and even among the Ossets, but they were soon crushed by force of numbers. Then came a plague which carried off vast numbers of victims in Imereti.
Tormasov was replaced by Paulucci, who, after a few months, was, in his turn, superseded by Rtishtshef. In 1813 took place the famous storming of Lenkoran, on the Caspian, by General Kotliarevski, followed by the Gulistan Treaty of Peace, which was signed on behalf of Persia by Sir Gore Ouseley, British ambassador at Teheran.
King Solomon died at Trebizond in 1815, and with him ended the troublous existence of Imereti as an independent kingdom. In about three and a half centuries thirty kings had sat on the Imeretian throne, twenty-two of them were dethroned (one of them, Bagrat the Blind, eight times), seven died a violent death, three were blinded.
Yermolov became governor-general in 1816, and soon afterwards the Chechens and Daghestanians began to give the Russians serious trouble. Then the clergy raised a national movement in Imereti, in which Guri and Apkhazi joined, and in Mingreli, hitherto faithful, the Dadian’s brother revolted. All these efforts to shake off the Russian yoke were, of course, fruitless, and they ended in 1822 with the capture of Zakatali from the Lesghians. Then the Cherkesses (Circassians) broke into rebellion, and in 1826 Persia again declared war against Russia and marched 60,000 men into Georgia. Aided by the Lesghians and the Kakhetians, under Alexander, son of Irakli, they were at first successful, but the tide turned, and Erivan, Tavriz, and other places saw Russia victorious.
Paskevich succeeded Yermolov in 1827, and the peace of Turkmenchai having been concluded with Persia, war was declared against Turkey. The Russians took Kars, Poti, Akhalkalaki, Akhaltsikhe, Bayazid from the Turks, and in 1829 the belligerents signed the treaty of Adrianople.
In 1830 Kasi-mullah began his revolt, and brought about a general rising among the Mahometan peoples of the Caucasus. Baron Rosen, who took the command of the army in 1831, captured Gimri, and Kasi-mullah was killed. Golovin (1837), Neidhart (1842), and Prince Vorontsov (1844–1854) enjoyed comparative peace, and were able to turn their attention to the internal condition of the country. Prince Vorontsov especially deserves credit for his honest and painstaking efforts to ameliorate the economic situation of Georgia, and it flatters our national pride to remember that that statesman was English by birth and education, if not by blood.
The pacification of Daghestan did not, as was expected, follow the death of Kasi-mullah. A greater prophet and warrior arose to take the place of the vanquished hero of Gimri. Shamil, after carrying on a guerilla warfare for about ten years, raised the whole of the Eastern Caucasus in 1843, and continued to inflict a series of crushing defeats on the Russian generals who were sent to oppose him. The declaration of war with Turkey in 1853 raised the hopes of the Lesghians, but the utter incapacity of the Turkish leaders in Armenia prevented the realization of those hopes. Everybody is familiar with the incidents of Shamil’s career down to the capture at Gunib in 1859; but it seems to me that too little attention has been devoted to the remarkable religious system which inspired the Murids to their marvellous deeds of valour. It is surely a noteworthy fact that the mysticism of the Sufis should have been found to be compatible with a purely militant faith like Islam.
During the last thirty years little of interest has happened in Georgia. The appointment of the Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich to the lieutenancy of the Caucasus in 1862, the gradual freeing of the serfs, the construction of railway and telegraph lines of communication, the founding of one or two banks, schools, and other establishments of public utility, are the chief events which the annalist has to chronicle. “Free” Svaneti was conquered a few years ago, and, for the present, Russia’s supremacy is undisputed as far as the frontiers of Turkey and Persia. Even the last war between Russia and Turkey was not accompanied by any visible commotion among the peoples of the Caucasus.