Dimitri ( ka, დიმიტრი; russian: Дмитрий Юлонович Грузинский, ''Dmitry Yulonovich Gruzinsky''; 11 April 1803 – 14 January 1845) was a

Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group ** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scrip ...

prince (''

batonishvili ''Batonishvili'' ( ka, ბატონიშვილი) (literally "a child of batoni (lord or sovereign)" in Georgian) is a title for royal princes and princesses who descend from the kings of Georgia from the Bagrationi dynasty and is suffixe ...

'') of the House of Bagrationi, the youngest son of

Prince Iulon of Georgia Iulon ( ka, იულონი; 4 June 1760 – 23 October 1816) was a Georgian royal prince (''batonishvili'') of the House of Bagrationi, born into the family of King Heraclius II and Queen Darejan Dadiani. He advanced claim to the throne of ...

and his wife, Princess Salome née Amilakhvari.

Family

Dimitri was born in the former royal house of Georgia already after the

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

annexation of his country. His father, Iulon, was a son of Heraclius II, the penultimate king of Kartli and Kakheti (eastern Georgia) and a pretender to the throne of Georgia. In 1805, Iulon and his family, with the exception of Dimitri's rebellious elder brother

Leon Leon, Léon (French) or León (Spanish) may refer to: Places Europe * León, Spain, capital city of the Province of León * Province of León, Spain * Kingdom of León, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again fro ...

, were deported by the Russian authorities to

Tula Tula may refer to: Geography Antarctica *Tula Mountains *Tula Point India *Tulā, a solar month in the traditional Indian calendar Iran * Tula, Iran, a village in Hormozgan Province Italy * Tula, Sardinia, municipality (''comune'') in the pr ...

. Later, they were allowed to settle in

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, the imperial capital.

Political activity

In the 1820s, Dimitri and his cousin Prince Okropir, son of

George XII of Georgia George XII ( ka, გიორგი XII, ''Giorgi XII''), sometimes known as George XIII (November 10, 1746 – December 28, 1800), of the House of Bagrationi, was the second and last King of the Kingdom of Kartl-Kakheti in eastern Georgia from ...

, became principal leaders of Georgian royalists, respectively, in St. Petersburg and Moscow. They held gatherings of Georgian students and officers in the Russian cities and tried to convince them that Georgia should be independent under the Bagrationi dynasty. In 1826, Dimitri helped found a secret society, which conceived the idea of an anti-Russian insurrection of Georgia. The most active center of the conspirators, based in the Georgian capital of

Tiflis Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Kura River with a population of approximately 1.5 million pe ...

—in which Dimitri's elder sister Tamar, Maid of Honor to the empress, played a role—was betrayed by one of its numbers, Prince Iase Palavandishvili, in 1832. The plot collapsed and Dimitri was deprived of his title of ''

tsarevich Tsarevich (russian: Царевич, ) is a Slavic title given to tsars' sons. Under the 1797 Pauline house law, the title was discontinued and replaced with ''Tsesarevich'' for the heir apparent alone. His younger brothers were called '' Velik ...

'' ("prince royal") and sent in exile to

Smolensk Smolensk ( rus, Смоленск, p=smɐˈlʲensk, a=smolensk_ru.ogg) is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River, west-southwest of Moscow. First mentioned in 863, it is one of the oldest c ...

. Afterwards, he grudgingly entered the Russian civil service, attaining to a minor rank of Collegiate Registrar (Коллежский регистратор). On 6 May 1833, he was recognized by the Russian crown in the princely title of ''

knyaz , or ( Old Church Slavonic: Кнѧзь) is a historical Slavic title, used both as a royal and noble title in different times of history and different ancient Slavic lands. It is usually translated into English as prince or duke, dependi ...

Gruzinsky Gruzinsky (russian: Грузинский; ka, გრუზინსკი) was a title and later the surname of two different princely lines of the Bagrationi dynasty of Georgia, both of which received it as subjects of the Russian Empire. The n ...

. He died unmarried, without issue, in 1845 in St. Petersburg and was interred at the

Alexander Nevsky Lavra Saint Alexander Nevsky Lavra or Saint Alexander Nevsky Monastery was founded by Peter I of Russia in 1710 at the eastern end of the Nevsky Prospekt in Saint Petersburg, in the belief that this was the site of the Neva Battle in 1240 when Ale ...

Ancestry

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dimitri 1803 births 1845 deaths Bagrationi dynasty of the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti 19th-century people from Georgia (country) People from the Russian Empire of Georgian descent