Siege of Erivan (1804)

Siege of Erivan
Part of the Russo-Persian War of 1804-1813
Date July–September 1804 Location Erivan, Qajar Iran (present-day Yerevan, Armenia) Result Iranian victory
Belligerents
Russian Empire	Qajar Iran
Commanders and leaders
Pavel Tsitsianov	Abbas Mirza Fath-Ali Shah Qajar Mohammad Khan
Strength
3,000 to 20,000 Georgian and Armenian auxiliaries	6,000-7,000 troops inside the citadel 18,000 cavalrymen

The Siege of Erivan took place from July to September 1804, during the Russo-Persian War of 1804-1813. The Iranians successfully defended the city and defeated the Russian attack.

Background

In 1801, three years after Agha Mohammad Khan's death, the Russians capitalized on the moment, and annexed Kartli-Kakheti (eastern Georgia), a region which had made part of Iran for centuries. In 1802, Pavel Tsitsianov was appointed as the new Russian commander-in-chief in the Caucasus. A die-hard Russian imperialist with zero tolerance and respect for the Iranians and the locals of the Caucasus, in January 1804, he invaded and ruthlessly sacked the Iranian city of Ganja. Thereby, they initiated the Russo-Persian War of 1804-1813. After the capture of Ganja, Tsitsianov proceeded to Erivan. At Echmiadzin, near Erivan, his army clashed with that of crown-prince and commander-in-chief Abbas Mirza. Tsitsianov and his men were unable to take Echmiadzin, and were thus forced to withdraw. A few days later, the Russians returned to Echmiadzin, where they caught an Iranian force by surprise; thereafter they marched on Erivan once again.

Siege

At the end of June, Tsitsianov arrived in front of Erivan. The Russians attacked, accompanied by heavy bombardment. The shah (king) himself was present at the defense, and commanded troops. At the time of the battle, the Iranians still fought with their "traditional army", mainly composed of light artillery and mobile cavalry, and had not yet initiated the program that would result in the creation of a military on modern lines (the Nezam-e Jadid). The siege happened to be somewhat of a "double siege", for the Russians besieged the Iranians, whereas the Iranians in turn besieged the invaders. The Iranians fought with a whole lot more courage and effectiveness than the Russians reportedly expected them to. During the siege, they managed to prevent the Russians from receiving supplies and reinforcements, whereas Erivan's garrisoned fortress prevented the Russians from making any direct attack.

Aftermath

After returning to the Georgia Governorate, Tsitsianov reported to Alexander I. In order to save his reputation, he blamed the failure of the siege on his subordinate generals and the Iranian governor of Erivan. However, the person with the most "guilt", according to Tsitsianov, was general and prince Dmitri Mikhailovich Volkonsky. According to Tsitsianov, the "disgrace" at Yerevan was to blame on the fact that Volkonsky didn't bring supplies. However, what he decided not to report, was that the area between Erivan up to Georgia was controlled by the Iranians, who prevented Russian contingents from travelling between the two, and that the Georgia Governorate needed every soldier it could munster for provincial peacekeeping and therefore simply could not miss any soldiers, even if the local authorities wanted to.

Alexander I received the report welcomely; he subsequently recalled Volkonsky, and awarded Tsitsianov. A few years later, when Tsitsianov's successor Ivan Gudovich unsuccessfully besieged Erivan, Alexander named his expedition as "stupid", and without any sort of compassion, sent him into retirement.

Sources

• Atkin, Muriel (1980). Russia and Iran, 1780-1828. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0816609246. 
• Axworthy, Michael (2010). A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind. Basic Books. pp. 1–352. ISBN 978-0465019205. ""Persia kept Yerevan and Nakhchivan, but lost everything else north of the Araxes, including Daghestan, Shirvan and Georgia, and cities that had been part of the Persian Empire for centuries like Darband, Baku, Tbilisi, and Ganja."" 
• Cronin, Stephanie, ed (2013). Iranian-Russian Encounters: Empires and Revolutions since 1800. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415624336. 
• Kazemzadeh, Firuz (1991). "Iranian relations with Russia and the Soviet Union, to 1921". The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol. 7). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521200950. 
• Kettenhofen, Erich; Bournoutian, George A.; Hewsen, Robert H. (1998). "EREVAN". Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. VIII, Fasc. 5. pp. 542–551. 
• Suny, Ronald Grigor (1994). The Making of the Georgian Nation. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253209153. 
• Tucker, Spencer C., ed (2010). "Overview of 1800-1850: Chronology". A Global Chronology of Conflict: From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1851096725.