Having become disenchanted with the Russians, Salim expelled the
garrison from Shakkiin the summer of 1806. In October of that year,
Major-General Nebol'sin, the commander of Russian troops in Qara-
bagh, invaded the khanate and stormed its capital. Salim, who escaped
to the mountains, soon regretted his clash with Russia and asked for
an imperial pardon, but Gudovich, once more in charge of Caucasian
affairs, considered Salim irredeemably treacherous and was deter-
mined that neither Salim nor any member of his family should ever
rule Shakki again. In December of 1806, Alexander, acting on Gudo-
vich's advice, proclaimed Ja'far Qoli Khan Domboli, the anti-Oajar
rebel and former governor of Khoi, to be the new khan of Shakki.^45
The last three khanates Russia acquired were all taken in conjunc-
tion with operations directed against Iran—Talesh in the first war,
Yerevan and Nakhjavan in the second. The khan of Talesh had never
sighed a formal treaty of submission to Russia but did ask for, and
sometimes received, Russian military protection. (This khanate was
so peripheral to Russia's main concerns that Russia did not wish to
establish a permanent garrison there.) After Tsitsianov's death, the
khan took the expedient of submitting to Iran as well but sought to
rely on Russian assistance.^46 Some of the Iranian attacks in the later
years of the war did considerable damage, and an ever-increasing
number of the khan's subjects rejected his authority and sided with
Iran. In August 1812, Talesh was conquered by an elite British-
trained corps of the Iranian army; but, in the following December
and January, after the outcome of the war had already been decided,
the khanate was conquered by Russian troops in extremely bloody
fighting in which both sides suffered an appalling number of casual-
ties.^47 The khans of Yerevan and Nakhjavan were both removed in
1805 by the shah on the grounds of disloyalty. The government of
Nakhjavan was entrusted to a cousin of the former khan. The new
khan of Yerevan, Hosein Qoli, was one of the most able men in Fath
'Ali's government and ruled Yerevan from 1807 until its conquest
by the Russians in 1827. At that time, Yerevani troops suffered a
decisive loss at Russian hands; the inhabitants then revolted and sub-
mitted to the Russians. Nakhjavan had been taken a few months
earlier without serious opposition.
During the first three decades of the nineteenth century, Russia
fulfilled its territorial objectives in the eastern Caucasus, although
it did so at great cost to all concerned. Russia's officials never
learned the lessons of 1796. They underestimated the natural ob-
stacles—difficulty of communication, unfamiliar climate and diet,
Russia's Conquest of the Eastern Caucasus 89