This article examines the conquest of the Caucasus in the context of the aggressive expansion of the Russian Empire, where Russians themselves and representa­tives of peoples who had already been conquered implemented Russian power politics. From among non-Russians, a large number of Germans, of whom the greater portion originated from the Baltic provin­ces of the Russian tsarist state, rose in the war to leading positions in the Russian Army. The position of Germans in the Russian army units in the Caucasus corresponded to their position in the Russian Army as a whole – the higher the rank, the more represented Germans were among non-Russians. The article demonstrates how important the role played by Baltic Germans in particular was in the conquest of the region and the subjugation of the land.

Lieutenant General Georg (in Russian fashion Grigori) Johann von Glasenapp, a man with a great deal of experience and a lengthy military career whose roots were in Livland, was appointed commander of the Caucasus defence line in 1803. His brutal and arrogant attitude towards the indigenous population of the land made Glasenapp a necessary individual for the tsarist army at that volatile time, and allowed his superiors to confidently entrust the responsible position of commander of the Caucasus line to him. In 1821–1826, Count Paul Demetrius von Kotzebue, son of the writer August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue, who lived and worked in Tallinn, served in the Special Caucasus Corps, which played the main role in conquering the Caucasus. Moritz von Kotzebue, another son of August Friedrich Ferdinand, also served in the Caucasus and was appointed senior quartermaster of the Special Caucasus Corps in 1822. In 1826, Baron Carl Wilhelm Gottlieb von Wrangell entered military service under the command of General Yermolov, commander of the Special Caucasus Corps, at the headquarters of the Corps in Tbilisi. After serving in Tbilisi, von Wrangell was sent onward to Karabakh together with another Baltic German officer, Baron Eugen Mengden. C. W. G. von Wrangell rose quickly through the ranks while serving in the Caucasus, becoming commander of the Yerevan regiment in 1837. He embarked on a punishment expedition to Abkhazia in that same year at the head of that regiment. Baron Georg (in Russian fashion Grigori) Andreas von Rosen became commander of the Special Caucasus Corps in 1831. In the summer of 1832, von Rosen went on a military campaign to Chechnya, crushing pockets of resistance there by the autumn and forcing the Chechens to pay tribute. Alexander von Wrangell, who was born in Tartu, operated in the Caucasus as von Rosen’s adjutant. Von Wrangell stood out in aggression against Western Caucasian peoples in the latter half of the 1830s.

After the death of Gazi Muhammad, who had led the resistance of the indigenous people, the 37-year-old Shamil, Gazi Muhammad’s relative and close friend, became the new imam and organiser of resistance against the Russian Army. Shamil led the resistance movement for nearly a quarter of a century in total, and von Rosen failed to subdue him. The war spread in the 1830s from Dagestan and Chechnya in the eastern part of the Northern Caucasus west to the coast of the Black Sea. In April of 1837, von Rosen set out from Sukhumi-Kale on a military campaign against the Abkhasian mountain settlement Tsebelda and captured it. In the following month, he organised an attack on Ardiller, a Dzhigit settlement on Cape Adler, and captured it with supporting artillery fire from the sea. Yet since the tsar was not satisfied with his activity in subjugating Shamil. He was dismissed from his post as comman­der of the Special Caucasus Corps in 1838.

When the population of the Western Caucasus rebelled against the Russian invaders in February of 1840, Joseph Carl von Anrep, a general from the Anrep noble family in Livland, was sent to crush the uprising. He was appointed commander of the Black Sea coastal defence line in 1841. General Paul Gustav Grabbe, a member of the Knighthood of Estland, led the suppression of resistance along the Caucasus line in the east. Georg Benedikt Heinrich von Maydell, a member of a family that belonged to the Knighthood of Estland, served for a brief period of time in the Caucasus under the command of Grabbe in 1842, participating in many military operations against the mountain people. General Georg (Grigori Hristoforovich) Otto Ewald Freiherr von Saß also served under Grabbe.

Regular destruction raids against auuls (villages) of the mountain people brought von Saß recognition from the tsarist authorities. Although his terrorist methods were known, he was appointed commander of the Kuban line in 1835. He was promoted to Major General in 1836. Caucasian historians describe him as a brutal and merciless coloniser of the Caucasus and a sadist.

Shamil surrendered on 6 September 1859. Gene­ral Alexander von Wrangell – the man who had arrived in the Caucasus together with Baron von Rosen in 1831 and made a brilliant military career in the intervening years in the Caucasus – organised the attack on the village of Gunib, where Shamil was in hiding.

After the subjugation of Shamil, the Russians were able to send their forces from Dagestan to the Western Caucasus. Now the decisive Russian ope­ration for subjugating the Western Caucasians began. Paul Grabbe’s son Mikhail Grabbe participated in battles in the North-western Caucasus at the start of the 1860s. The greater portion of Baltic German officers who have hitherto been named had already left the Caucasus by then. The last centres of resistance in the Caucasian War were liquidated in 1864. A large portion of the local population was forced to leave the country to make room for the following agrarian colonisation.