Nor was the annexation part of a Russian plan, with or without French
participation, for extensive conquests in Asia that were to culminate
in the conquest of India. The purported Franco-Russian plan is most
probably a forgery. Even if it were authentic, the plan called for an
invasion route that did not involve any part of the Caucasus. The
same is true for the expedition Paul really sent to expel the British
from India. In fact, the decision to send Russian troops to India in
1801 was an outgrowth of Russia's conflicts in Europe. Russia and
Britain were then at war, and Paul, like many of the British them-
selves, believed that the best way to strike at Britain would be to
strike where it was most vulnerable—in India.^27
The attempted conquest of India was but the latest in a series of
Paul's unpopular actions in the foreign and domestic spheres. On the
night of March 11, he was assassinated in a palace coup that put his
twenty-three-year-old son Alexander on the throne. Like his father,
the new tsar began his reign with the determination to keep Russia
out of war. Therefore, while he continued amicable relations with
France, he also achieved a reconciliation with Britain, Austria, and
Prussia. The day after he came to the throne, he canceled the expe-
dition, which was still far from reaching India. He refused to estab-
lish a Russian garrison on Malta but agreed to send troops to the
Ionian Republic. In these two cases, the bases for his decisions were
clear. Russia did not yet have any troops in Malta—which Alexander
wanted restored to its former sovereign, the king of Naples—but
Russia had occupied the Ionian Islands briefly under Paul and still
had considerable political influence there..
In contrast, Alexander was uncertain about how to resolve the
status of Georgia. At the heart of his concern was the issue of the
legitimate rights of monarchs. He asked the State Council to decide
whether he would commit an offense against the heirs to the Georgian
throne if he approved the annexation of Georgia. The debate over
the future of that kingdom was really about the whole of Russia's
policy toward the Caucasus and Iran, so intimately connected had
these themes become. The "experts"—the Zubovs, Knorring, and
Musin-Pushkin—favored annexation, as did most members of the
Council.^28 However, for the first time since the 1780s, there were
trusted counselors who challenged all the standard assumptions of
what Russia might gain by establishing a foothold in the eastern Cau-
casus. The debate marked the culmination of a crucial stage in the
shaping of Russian attitudes toward Iran and the Caucasian border-
lands. Once Georgia had been made an integral part of the Russian
60 Russian Policy: Questions and Continuity