[4] Aided by his personal abilities and the unrest in Iran following Nader Shah's death, Heraclius established himself as a de facto autonomous ruler, unified eastern Georgia politically for the first time in three centuries,[5] and attempted to modernize the government, economy, and military.

In the meantime, Heraclius defeated a coup attempt by the rival Georgian prince Abdullah Beg of the Mukhrani dynasty and helped Teimuraz suppress the aristocratic opposition to the Persian hegemony led by Givi Amilakhvari.

Teimuraz and Heraclius took advantage of the ensuing political instability in Persia to assert their independence and expelled Persian garrisons from all key positions in Georgia, including Tbilisi.

In close cooperation with each other, they managed to prevent a new revolt by the Mukhranian supporters fomented by Ebrahim Khan, brother of Adel Shah, in 1748.

They concluded an anti-Persian alliance with the khans of Azerbaijan who were particularly vulnerable to the aggression from Persian warlords and agreed to recognize Heraclius's supremacy in eastern Transcaucasia.

In 1749, he occupied Yerevan, and in June 1751, Heraclius defeated a large army commanded by a pretender to the Persian throne and his former ally, Azat-Khan in the Battle of Kirkhbulakh.

[10] In 1752, the Georgian kings sent a mission to Russia to request 3,000 Russian troops or a subsidy to enable them to hire Circassian mercenaries in order to invade Persia and install a pro-Russian government there.

[10] In 1762, Teimuraz II died while on a diplomatic mission to the court of St. Petersburg, and Heraclius succeeded him as King of Kartli, thus uniting eastern Georgia politically for the first time in three centuries.

[5] In 1762–1763, during Karim Khan Zand's campaigns in Azerbaijan, Heraclius II tendered his de jure submission to him and received his investiture as vali ("governor", "viceroy") of Gorjestan (Georgia), the traditional Safavid office, which by this time however had become an "empty honorific".

He chose Russia not only because it was Orthodox Christian, but in Lang's[11] account also because it would serve as a link to Europe, which he thought a model for Georgia's development as a modern nation.

His participation in the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) did not lead to an anticipated reconquest of the Ottoman-held southern Georgian lands, for the Russian commanders in Georgia behaved in a highly condescending, often treacherous way,[11] and Empress Catherine II treated the Caucasus front as merely a secondary theater of military operations.

Mohammad Khan Qajar, who had managed to bring most of central Iranian plateau under his firm control by 1794, was inclined to revive the Persian Empire with the Caucasus again as its part.

While becoming a witness of the fearful devastation of his capital and slaughter of its civilians, king Heraclius, who did not want to leave the battlefield and the city was spirited away by the last of his bodyguards and a few family members.

But her death that year brought an abrupt change of policy in the Caucasus, and her successor Paul I again withdrew all Russian troops from the region.

[12] In the same decades, the copper coins struck at Tbilisi bore three types of iconography; Christian, Georgian, "and even" Imperial Russian (such as the double-headed eagle).

[12] While maintaining certain Persian-type pomp at his court, he launched an ambitious program of "Europeanization" which was supported by the Georgian intellectual élites, but was not overwhelmingly successful because Georgia remained physically isolated from Europe and had to expend all available resources on defending its precarious independence.

He strove to enlist the support of European powers and to attract Western scientists and technicians to give his country the benefit of the latest military and industrial techniques.

At the same time, he encouraged peasant-vassals to supply the military force necessary to overcome the aristocracy's resistance and protect the country from incessant marauding assaults from Dagestan known to Georgians as Lekianoba.

On campaign, he would sit up at night watching for the enemy, while in time of peace, he spent his life in transacting business of state or in religious exercise, and devoted but a few hours to sleep.

He was succeeded by his weak and sickly son, George XII, after whose death Tsar Paul I annexed, in 1801, Kartli-Kakheti to Russia, terminating both Georgia's independence and a millennium-long rule of the Bagrationi dynasty.

[15] Heraclius's policies and explotation of peasants by landowners often resulted in rebellions: when lord Eliozashvili demanded more than the usual 50 days' work on his estates, serfs revolted and attacked his family, burned his church and stole casks of wine.

[22] Erekleoba is an annual, traditional public feast celebrated at Hereclius II's palace in Eastern Georgia's city of Telavi on November 7 to pay tribute to his memory.