Two years later he was pardoned and brought back into service by Alexander I. Yermolov distinguished himself during the Napoleonic Wars at the Battles of Austerlitz, Eylau, Borodino, Kulm, and Paris.

His father, Pyotr Alekseyevich Yermolov, owned a small estate with 150 serfs in the Mtsensky Uyezd of the Oryol Governorate.

[4] According to the practice of the time, Yermolov was officially enrolled in the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment as a child (for future service).

In June 1807, Yermolov commanded horse artillery company in the actions at Guttstadt and Deppen, Heilsberg and Friedland, being awarded the Order of St. George (3rd class, 7 September 1807).

Although his division took part in the 1809 campaign against Austria, Yermolov commanded the reserves in Volhynia and Podolsk gubernias, where he remained for the next two years.

During the 1812 Campaign, Yermolov took part in the retreat to Smolensk and played an important role in the quarrel between Generals Barclay de Tolly and Bagration.

In late November, he commanded one of the detachments in the advance guard under General Rosen taking part in the combats on the Berezina.

Yermolov's main tasks were to secure Russia's hold over Georgia and the khanates recently taken from Persia, to occupy the Caucasus range separating the new territories from the rest of the Empire and to subdue the 'savage' and hostile Muslim tribes inhabiting it.

But first he had another, most urgent task: Yermolov had to travel on a mission to Tehran, to evade the execution of Alexander I's promise to restore to Fath-Ali Shah Qajar part of the territories acquired by Russia in the Treaty of Gulistan of 1813[6] During his tenure as commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, Yermolov (by that time promoted to the rank of full artillery general) was responsible for robust Russian military policies in Caucasus, where his name became a byword for brutality.

He was adored by his soldiers, often fraternising with them, and generally successful in combatting the highlanders of Dagestan, but failed to prevent multiple uprisings.

As Moshe Gammer writes: Far from subduing the population, as his admirers up to the present have asserted, his activities rather intensified hatred to Russia, stiffened resistance to it and helped to enhance the role of Islam, in the form of the spread of the Naqshbandi tariqa (Sufi brotherhood) which would leave now resistance in the eastern part of the Caucasus and for some periods of time in some of its western parts too.

He was the first to employ a comprehensive strategy for the subjugation of the Caucasus highlands, and his brutal methods would be used, in one form or another, by tsarists, Bolsheviks, and Russian generals into the twenty-first century.

He was responsible for implementing a series of policies that were at the time hailed as vehicles for civilizing the benighted Caucasus frontier but today might very well be called state-sponsored terrorism.

"[17]John F. Baddeley, author of Russian Conquest of the Caucasus (Chapter VI, 1908), described him in 1908:"In person no less than in character Yermolov impressed all who came near him as one born to command.

Of gigantic stature and uncommon physical strength, with round head set on mighty shoulders and framed in shaggy locks, there was something leonine in his whole appearance, which, coupled with unsurpassed courage, was well calculated to excite the admiration of his own men and strike terror into his semi-barbarous foes.

Incorruptibly honest, simple, even rude in his habit, and of Spartan hardihood, his sword was ever at his side, and in city as in camp he slept wrapped only in his military cloak, and rose with the sun.

"Since 2000, Kalach-on-don has been operating a multi-purpose ship of the KC-104-02 project named after the hero of the Patriotic war of 1812 — "General Yermolov", as an object of intangible heritage that preserves the historical memory of the people.