A scion of the Georgian royal family Bagrationi, he was a brother of Pyotr Bagration, a notable Russian commander during the Napoleonic Wars.

In 1802, he was commissioned in the Leib Guard Hussar regiment as a poruchik and fought against Napoleonic France during the 1805 War of the Third Coalition.

At the request of his brother, Prince Bagration, he arrived, in 1806, in Georgia, to meet with a delegation of local nobility, which submitted him a petition expressing dissatisfaction with the Russian administration.

During Napoleon's invasion of Russia (1812), he served in the 3rd Western Army and fought in the battles of Kobryn, Brest, and Gorodechno.

He played a prominent role in the storming of Erivan, a Persian-held city of Armenia, in 1827 during the Russo-Persian War (1826-1828), and was elevated to the rank of lieutenant general in 1829.