of inhabitants killed at 1,500; other Russian authors put the figure at
1,750; Ganjevi and Iranian sources referred to more than 3,000 casual-
ties. Tsitsianov himself acknowledged that thousands of Ganjevis had
been ruined by the conquest of the khanate. Ganjeh was made a dis-
trict of Georgia and renamed ElizavetpoP in honor of Alexander's
wife.
28
Some of Tsitsianov's contemporaries believed that the violent reso-
lution of Ganjeh's status was exactly what the general had intended,
perhaps to demonstrate his prowess to St. Petersburg, perhaps to
punish Javad for repudiating his submission of 1796.^29 Whatever his
motives, circumstantial evidence makes it appear that Tsitsianov de-
liberately made his demands on Javad intolerably harsh. By Tsitsia-
nov's own reckoning, all of Javad's regular revenue (except his share
of the harvests and herds) came to only 16,430 rubles in the last year
of the khan's reign, yet tribute was set at 20,000 rubles. Tsitsianov re-
fused to discuss the merits of the khan's counterarguments, offering
only the choice between submission and bloodshed. Moreover, at the
end of November 1803, while Tsitsianov was still urging Javad to sub-
mit peacefully, the general issued a proclamation to the Armenians of
Ganjeh that could easily have been interpreted as an attempt to un-
dermine Javad's authority. The proclamation promised Russian pro-
tection for the Armenians from all Muslim coercion and robbery. Since
Caucasian Armenians of that era frequently described Muslim rule as
Muslim oppression, the protection the general offered was likely to
be interpreted broadly. The general also gave Ganjevi Armenians per-
mission to settle in any part of Georgia and, as an added inducement,
offered them state peasant status instead of serfdom.^30 Ganjeh was
already sparsely populated, and its Armenian community was an im-
portant source of the kahn's revenue, both through its payment of the
extra tax on tolerated non-Muslims and its involvement in a variety
of economic activities. Thus, Russian suzerainty would mean not only
a substantial drain on the Ganjevi revenues in the form of tribute pay-
ments but also the reduction of the number of taxpayers.
Tsitsianov was well pleased with the way events developed in Gan-
jeh. After the conquest, he portrayed his actions as necessary for the
maintenance of Russian prestige. He wrote to Chancellor Vorontsov
that, if he had lifted the siege without taking the citadel, that "would
have been, in my opinion, improper and the might of Russian arms
would fall in the eyes of neighbors, who base their conduct solely on
fear of the strong."^31 The fact that he took the citadel by storm rather
than any other means gave him particular satisfaction since the struc-
ture had been considered impregnable. "The fortunate storming [of
Russia's Conquest of the Eastern Caucasus 83