Russia has a few troops spread out…
March 1769 CE
In 1769, as a diversion, they send Gottlieb Heinrich Totleben south into Georgia.
Born in Tottleben, Thuringia, Totleben had served at the court of Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and had fled Saxony after being accused of corruption.
He then served for various periods at the courts of Saxe-Weissenfels, Bavaria, the Dutch Republic during the War of the Austrian Succession, and the Kingdom of Prussia.
In 1747 he is mentioned as commander of a regiment of infantry of the Dutch Republic, but the regiment existed only on paper and was never realized.
By then he already had a reputation as a scoundrel.
Count Totleben had entered the Russian service during the Seven Years’ War (1757-1763).
He had distinguished himself at the Battle of Kunersdorf (1759) and was promoted to General, gaining particular fame for his brief occupation of the Prussian capital Berlin in 1760.
Shortly, the advance of Frederick the Great’s Prussian army had forced him to retreat, however.
In June 1761, he was accused of treachery and arrested in Pomerania.
Sent in chains to St. Petersburg, he was sentenced to death via quartering, but Empress Catherine the Great had pardoned him in 1763.
Nevertheless, Totleben had been deprived of all his titles and awards and sent into exile abroad (or to Siberia, according to one account).
In 1768, with the outbreak of the war with the Ottoman Empire, he had been summoned to active service again, this time in Transcaucasia, where, for the first time in the history of the Russo-Turkish wars, Catherine has decided to stage a military diversion against the Ottomans' frontier provinces.
Thus, Totleben becomes the first commander to have brought an organized Russian military force in Transcaucasia through the Daryal Pass.
He has been instructed to join his forces with King Heraclius II of Georgia, who hopes to reconquer the Ottoman-held southern Georgian lands in conjunction with Russia.
However, Totleben soon quarrels with the Georgian king and his commanders, whom he despises as "ignorant orientals" and demands the exclusion of all Georgian officers from a combined army.
Several Russian officers plot against Totleben who, in his turn, accuses Georgians of instigating all intrigues.