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Armenia and Azerbaidzhan (see map i) remained in thePersian sphere of influence; western Georgia and theBlack Sea coast and hinterland in the Turkish. Thecontinuance of Persian-Turkish rivalry in the Caucasuswas always a major aim of Russian policy. In conjunctionwith the disparateness and animosities of theCaucasian peoples themselves, it operated as a decidingfactor in the permanent Russian conquest of these landsthat began in the late eighteenth century. In all thefifteen wars that Russia has fought with Turkey andPersia, only once (1806-12) did she have to fight bothof them at the same time.The Russian drive against Turkey for the northernBlack Sea coastlands during Catherine the Great's reignwas also a drive south-eastwards for their continuationin the Kuban and North Caucasus steppes. Her twowars with Turkey (1768-74, 1787-92) were, on theeastern side of the Black Sea, the climaxes of a generationof energetic military colonization of these steppes, ofchallenge to the Turkish forts on the coast, to Turkishslave supplies, and to Turkish suzerainty over thewarlike Moslem mountaineers. Among them for thefirst time (1785) a 'holy war' was successfully preachedagainst the infidel northerner: their eighty years'struggle against subjection had begun.Beyond the giant range of the central Caucasus, theGeorgians, long since disunited and rent by socialcleavages, multiplied renewed appeals for Orthodoxassistance against the competing overlordship of Turkeyand Persia, and in 1783 the eastern Georgian kingdomaccepted the protectorate of Catherine. Three timesRussian troops, marching through the key Dariel Pass inthe central Caucasus, entered Tiflis, only to be laterwithdrawn. At last in 1799 they came to stay. Theeastern Georgian kingdom, under threat from its suzerainPersia, expired into the arms of Russia (1801).This led on to the final reckoning with Persia. Itwas long drawn out, principally because Alexander I washeavily engaged at the same time in the West both withNapoleon and with Turkey, additionally because attimes Napoleon, at times the British, did what they could292