God Save The Royal House of Bagrationi & The United Georgian Kingdom

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• published: 11 Aug 2008
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In 1783 Erekle II Bagrationi, king of Kartli-Kakheti (Eastern Georgian Kingdom) signed the Treaty of Georgievsk with Russia, according to which his kingdom (including Georgian little town Tskhinvali) was to receive Russian protection. But Russians withdrew their troops from the region, leaving Erekle's kingdom unprotected. In 1795, the Persian shah, Agha Mohammed Khan, invaded the country and burnt the capital, Tbilisi, to the ground. After Erekle's and George XII's death, Tsar Paul I of Russia signed a decree on the incorporation of Eastern Georgia (Kartli-Kakheti) within the Russian Empire, which was confirmed by Tsar Alexander I on September 12, 1801. The Georgian Royal envoy in Saint Petersburg, Garsevan Chavchavadze, reacted with a note of protest that was presented to the Russian vice-chancellor Alexander Kurakin. In May 1801 Russian General Carl Heinrich Knorring removed the Georgian heir to the throne David Bagrationi from power and deployed a provisional government headed by General Ivan Petrovich Lasarev. Georgian nobility did not accept the decree until April 1802 when General Knorring held the nobility in Tbilisi's Sioni Cathedral and forced them to take an oath on the imperial crown of Russia. Those who disagreed were arrested. Newly established Russian administration started deporting the members of 1300 year old Georgian Royal Dynasty Bagrationi to Russia. On April 22, 1803, the Russian soldiers arrived at Queen's mansion and General Lazarev ordered Mariam (Maria, the Last Queen of Eastern Georgia) to get up and be ready for departure, but the queen refused to follow him. The general then took hold of her foot, to make her rise from the cushion on which she was sitting, surrounded by her sleeping children. Mariam, indignant at the attempt to take her by force, drew the dagger from beneath the cushion and stabbed Lazarev, killing him on the spot. Lazarev's interpreter drew his saber, and gave her a wound in the head, so that she fell down insensible. The soldiers burst into the bedroom and arrested the queen and her children. Escorted by a considerable armed force, they were carried away to Russia through the Daryal Pass. During her passage through Georgia, the inhabitants came out to testify their loyalty to the queen and bade her farewell. The tragic story of Queen Mariam was described in several contemporary accounts, based on the reports of eye-witnesses, and found its place in European literature of that time. In 1811, the autocephaly (i.e. independent status) of the 1500 years old Orthodox Church of Iveria and Tron of the Patriarch was abolished, the Catholicos-Patriarch Anton II was deported to Russia. After the conquest of Western Georgian Kingdom by Imperial Russia in 1810, the last king and the last Georgian Bagrationi ruler Solomon II fled to the Ottoman possessions in Trabzond where he died in 1815. In 1814, the Western Georgian Patriarchate of Abkhazia-Imeretia was also abolished, by the Russian authorities and annexed to the Exarchate of Georgia, a subdivision of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose part it was until the restoration of the unified and autocephalous Georgian Orthodox Church in 1917. The Patriarchs of Abkhazia-Imeretia mostly came from the leading Georgian noble houses, and were able to support the church financially and secure its continuous involvement in the political and cultural life of western Georgia during many centuries. Their spiritual jurisdiction extended over the Kingdom of Imereti and its vassal principalities -- Guria, Mingrelia, Svaneti and Abkhazia. They considered themselves as vicars of St.Andrew who, according to a medieval Georgian tradition, preached Christianity in western Georgia, then known to the Classical authors as Colchis (Kolkhida). In the latter part of the 16th century, Catholicos Eudemos I (Chkheidze) had to move his residence from Bichvinta (Pitsunda), Abkhazia to the Gelati Monastery at Kutaisi, fleeing the Ottoman and north caucasian pagan and muslim ethnic groups expansion into Abkhazia and western Mengrelia.