perhaps by spurring the tribes of the high Caucasus to attack Russian
positions north of the mountains. In all of these protestations of
righteous wrath, Catherine never mentioned that Russia had not lived
up to its commitment to Georgia. Once again the problem lay in the
unwise decision of an official in the field and St. Petersburg's inability
to control such officials. The man most responsible for the failure to
aid Georgia was General Ivan Gudovich, the commander of the Cau-
casian Line (Russia's forts in the northern Caucasus). King Erekle
had begun to warn him of the likelihood of a Qajar attack as early as
the spring of 1795, but the general dismissed the request for help as
alarmist and predicted that an alliance between Erekle and his neigh-
bors would prevent Aqa Mohammad from reaching Georgia. There
were many flaws in Gudovich's argument, not the least being that the
small forces Erekle and his neighbors could muster were no match
for Aqa Mohammad's 60,000-man army. There was a kind of peevish-
ness about the way Gudovich exercised power. Unlike most of the
officers who served in the Caucasus (who sought opportunities to
stage daring operations even when St. Petersburg advised restraint),
Gudovich's principal ambition seems to have been to hoard his re-
sources and do nothing. In 1793, Catherine had given him blanket
authorization to use Russian troops to defend Georgia, but, on the
eve of Aqa Mohammad's entry into Tbilisi, Gudovich still insisted he
could do nothing unless Catherine ordered it specifically. He displayed
a similar attitude the following year when he sent insufficient rein-
forcements from the Caucasian Line to the Zubov expedition only
after much delay.
26
When Gudovich heard about the sack of Tbilisi, he informed Cath-
erine that such action was the equivalent of a direct attack on Russia
and recommended as a countermeasure a campaign against Aqa Mo-
hammad. Catherine liked the idea and, with the aid of Platon Zubov,
made preparations for such an undertaking. However, she chose to
entrust its command to an officer of greater prestige than Gudovich.
Zubov and the Armenian archbishop Joseph Argutinskii-Dolgorukov
recommended General-in-Chief Suvorov, whose reputation had re-
cently been enhanced by his suppression of the Polish uprising of
- Suvorov was unimpressed and rejected the offer. Therefore,
Catherine gave the command to Platon Zubov's twenty-five-year-old
brother, Valerian.
High hopes prevailed when the campaign began in 1796. According
to various estimates, Catherine allocated millions of rubles to it from
a near-empty treasury, thousands of cavalry horses and pack animals,
and between 10,000 and 30,000 soldiers.^27 Catherine ordered the
Russian Expansion under Catherine the Great 39