Biography
He was born in Tbilisi to Archil, a Georgian Bagratid prince and sometime king of Imereti who fled the anarchy in his country to Russia. Since 1684, Alexander and his brother, Mamuka (Matvey) (died in 1693), were raised in Moscow under the auspices of Knyaz Fedul Volkonsky and Dyak Ivan Kazarinov. Alexander befriended with the young Russian tsarevich Pyotr Alekseyevich, subsequently Peter I of Russia, whom he joined in his war games. In 1690, Alexander was present at his father’s futile attempt to regain the throne of Imereti. In 1697, he accompanied Peter in the Grand Embassy to Europe. He studied artillery at The Hague and, upon his return to Russia, became the first Russian officer to be promoted to the rank of General Feldzeugmeister and appointed the chief of the Pushkarsky Prikaz (literally, "cannon administration"). With the outbreak of the Great Northern War, in which Russia confronted Sweden, Alexander was put in command of the Russian artillery (145 cannons and 28 howitzers). He was present at the 1700 Battle of Narva, which ended in disaster, with the whole Russian artillery and its commander being captured by the victorious Swedes. He was taken to Stockholm, where spent ten years as a prisoner of war until being ransomed by Peter I in 1710. Severely ill, he died at Riga, during his return journey to Russia. He was buried at Donskoy Monastery, Moscow.
He is also a purported translator of The Testament of Basil the Macedonian into Georgian.
Read more about this topic: Prince Alexander Of Imereti
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