[1] After having finished education at the Infantry Cadet Corps, he started serving as a lieutenant of the regular army on 27 July 1773, and became adjutant to General Field Marshal Zakhar Chernyshev on 11 October.

[1] On 12 January 1793, he was promoted to major general and subsequently served in Poland where the Kościuszko Uprising was taking place.

[1] His service in Astrakhan was very short lived however, for he retired from that duty later that same year, and returned to the main army on 15 April 1806.

[1] In 1812–1813, during the Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813, he successfully managed to repulse the Iranian armies in what is now northern Armenia and southern Georgia.

[3] The treaty, with Rtishchev as the Russian signatory,[3] ratified for the irrevocable cession of swaths of Iran's Caucasus territories, comprising present-day eastern Georgia, most of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and southern Dagestan to Russia.