20 Facts About Alexander Chavchavadze

Prince Alexander Chavchavadze was a Georgian poet, public benefactor and military figure.

Alexander Chavchavadze was a member of the noble family elevated to the princely rank by the Georgian king Constantine II of Kakhetia in 1726.

Alexander Chavchavadze was born in 1786, in St Petersburg, Russia, where his father, Prince Garsevan Chavchavadze, served as an ambassador of Heraclius II, king of Kartli and Kakheti in eastern Georgia.

Alexander Chavchavadze first saw his native Georgia at the age of 13, when the family moved back to Tiflis after the Russian annexation of eastern Georgia.

At the age of 18, Alexander Chavchavadze joined Prince Parnaoz, a member of the dispossessed royal family, in the 1804 rebellion in the mountainous Georgian province of Mtiuleti against Russian rule.

Alexander Chavchavadze's manuscripts were widely circulated with his lyrics of love or protest, written in the spirit of the 18th-century Georgian poet Besiki or of the French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, sung in Tiflis and elsewhere in Georgia.

In 1817, Prince Alexander Chavchavadze became a colonel of the Russian army.

Alexander Chavchavadze was instrumental in the conquest of Iravan from Persia in 1827 and was appointed, in 1828, a military governor of the Armenian Military District.

Back in Georgia, Alexander Chavchavadze enjoyed overwhelming popularity among the Georgian nobility and people.

Alexander Chavchavadze was highly respected by his fellow Russian and Georgian officers.

The prominent Russian diplomat and playwright Alexander Chavchavadze Griboyedov married his 16-year-old daughter Nino, whom the famous Russian poet had tutored in music during his brief stay in Tiflis.

Alexander Chavchavadze built Georgia's oldest and largest winery where he combined European and centuries-long Georgian wine-making traditions.

Alexander Chavchavadze was sentenced to the five-year exile to Tambov, but the tsar, who needed his military talents given the ongoing Caucasian War, forgave him.

Alexander Chavchavadze joined the expedition against the rebellious mountain people of the North Caucasus.

Alexander Chavchavadze was promoted to lieutenant general in 1841, and continued his service in the Caucasus, briefly as head of the civil administration of the region from 1842 to 1843.

In 1846, Alexander Chavchavadze fell victim to an accident, under somewhat mysterious circumstances: while returning to his palace in Tsinandali at night, somebody from the nearby woods approached him and splashed hot water while he was galloping on his horse.

Alexander Chavchavadze lost the control of the horse and crashed into the ditch nearby.

Alexander Chavchavadze was buried at the Shuamta Monastery in Kakheti, Georgia.

Alexander Chavchavadze was survived by a son, David, who was a lieutenant general in the Russian service during the Caucasus Wars, and three daughters, Nino, Catherine, and Sophia.

Alexander Chavchavadze moved the Georgian poetic language closer to the vernacular, combining the elements of the formal wealth and somewhat artificial antiquated "high" style inherited from the 18th-century Georgian Renaissance literature, melody of Persian lyrical poetry, particularly Hafiz and Saadi, bohemian language of the streets of Tiflis and the moods and themes of European Romanticism.