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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.
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