Erekle II of Georgia

Erekle II ruled eastern Georgia through the second half of the eighteenth century, striving to preserve a Christian kingdom between the Persian and Ottoman empires while turning, fatefully, toward Russia. Born in Telavi in 1720, he was the son of Teimuraz II of the Kakhetian branch of the Bagrationi dynasty and of Tamar, daughter of King Vakhtang VI of Kartli, a parentage that joined the two main lines of the royal house. As a young man he served in the armies of Nader Shah of Persia, accompanying the shah's invasion of India in 1738-39, an experience that shaped his military outlook.

In 1744 Nader Shah, rewarding the family's loyalty, recognized Teimuraz as king of Kartli and Erekle as king of Kakheti. After the shah's assassination in 1747 the two kings ruled in practical independence, and on Teimuraz's death in 1762 Erekle united the two crowns as king of Kartli-Kakheti, the first ruler to hold both eastern Georgian kingdoms since the fifteenth century. His long reign was spent in nearly constant defense against raids from the Dagestani mountaineers and in shifting contests with Persian and Ottoman power, alongside efforts at modernization: he invited European officers, worked mines, encouraged manufactures, and attempted to create a regular standing army.

Convinced that the kingdom could not survive alone, Erekle concluded the Treaty of Georgievsk with the Russia of Catherine the Great in 1783, placing Kartli-Kakheti under Russian protection while preserving the Bagrationi crown and the autonomy of the Georgian church. The protection failed its test. In 1795 Agha Mohammad Khan, founder of Persia's Qajar dynasty, demanded that Erekle renounce the Russian alliance; the king refused, and in September of that year the vastly outnumbered Georgian army was defeated at Krtsanisi, after which Tbilisi was sacked and burned. Russian help arrived too late to prevent the catastrophe.

Erekle died at Telavi in January 1798, succeeded by his son George XII. Three years later Russia annexed Kartli-Kakheti outright, abolishing the monarchy; many of Erekle's numerous descendants entered the Russian imperial nobility, where the Bagration name remained prominent. In Georgian memory he endures as "patara kakhi," the Little Kakhetian, the last great warrior king of the dynasty.