The ferocity of Tsitsianov's demeanor in dealing with various khans
reflected not only his desire to humble them into submission but also
the weakness of his own position. Even if he had felt inclined to com-
promise, he could not have afforded to do so without abandoning
many of his goals. In the three sieges he initiated —at Ganjeh, Yere-
van, and Baku —the Russian position was at least as perilous as the
defenders'. On each occasion, the Russians' food supplies and ammu-
nition were virtually exhausted and illness incapacitated a large pro-
portion of the force. Thus, Tsitsianov was compelled either to attack
immediately or to retreat, which would have been injurious to his repu-
tation in St. Petersburg as well as humiliating to Russian self-esteem.
At Ganjeh, he chose to attack; at Yerevan, his subordinates forced
him to withdraw; at Baku, he was saved this bitter choice by the ap-
parent last-minute submission of the khan.
Tribute was another issue on which Tsitsianov refused to allow the
khans any leeway. Whenever a khan tried to negotiate for more favor-
able terms of submission instead of complying unquestioningly with
Tsitsianov's demands, the general replied by increasing substantially
the amount of tribute he demanded. If tribute were important only as
a symbol of subjection to Russia and were scaled to each khanate's
resources, as Alexander intended, then the size of the payments would
have been less important than a khan's willingness to make them. How-
ever, for Tsitsianov, the issue was far more than symbolic. The cost
of occupying Georgia and of taking the offensive against various Cau-
casion rulers and the shah of Iran exhausted the general's finances.
Before the annexation of Georgia, advocates of annexation had por-
trayed that kingdom as a country whose mineral resources and other
riches would support the Russian presence in the Caucasus. After an-
nexation, it became clear that regardless of the country's potential, it
was a depopulated, devastated land on the verge of anarchy. In 1802,
Georgia's cash revenue was more than 30,000 rubles in arrears. Its grain
taxes had not been collected at all. Especially after the resumption of
the war against France in 1805, St. Petersburg was unwilling to make
supplementary allocations for the Caucasian theater. Therefore, Tsit-
sianov believed that he had to exact the maximum in tribute from
each khanate in order to finance his ambitious projects.^26 With his
characteristic inability to appreciate other points of view, he failed to
anticipate the degree of anti-Russian feeling his exorbitant tribute de-
mands would create.
One of the khanates in which tribute was a particularly important
issue was Ganjeh. This khanate was Tsitsianov's first conquest and his
first big success. It was a logical choice not only because of its strategic
Russia's Conquest of the Eastern Caucasus^81