Saint Petersburg reacted with a note of protest that was presented to the Russian vice-chancellor Prince Kurakin. In May 1801, under the oversight of General Carl Heinrich Knorring Imperial Russia transferred power in eastern Georgia to the government headed by General Ivan Petrovich Lasarev. The Georgian nobility did not accept the decree until April 1802 when General Knorring compassed the nobility in Tbilisi's Sioni Cathedral and forced them to take an oath on the Imperial Crown of Russia. Those who disagreed were temporarily arrested.
In the summer of 1805, Russian troops on the Askerani River near Zagam defeated the Persian army and saved Tbilisi from conquest now that it was officially part of the Imperial territories.
Following the annexation of eastern Georgia, the western Georgian kingdom of Imereti was annexed by Tsar Alexander I of Russia. The last Imeretian king and the last Georgian Bagrationi ruler Solomon II died in exile in 1815. From 1803 to 1878, as a result of numerous Russian wars against the Ottoman Empire, several of Georgia's previously lost territories – such as Adjara – were recovered. The principality of Guria was abolished and incorporated into the Empire in 1828, and that of Megrelia in 1857. The region of Svaneti was gradually annexed in 1857–59.
Declaration of independence
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia declared independence on May 26, 1918, in the midst of the Russian Civil War. The parliamentary election was won by the Menshevik Georgian Social-Democratic Party. Its leader, Noe Zhordania, became prime minister.
In 1918, the Georgian–Armenian War erupted over parts of Georgian provinces populated mostly by Armenians which ended because of British intervention. In 1918–19, Georgian general Giorgi Mazniashvili led a Georgian attack against the White Army led by Moiseev and Denikin in order to claim the Black Sea coastline from Tuapse to Sochi and Adler for independent
