Niko I Dadiani, Prince of Megrelia

Nikoloz "Niko" Dadiani, or Nikolay Davidovich Dadian-Mingrelsky (; 4 January 1847 – 23 January 1903), was the last Prince of Mingrelia from 1853 to 1867. Of the House of Dadiani, one of the leading Georgian noble families, he succeeded on the death of his father, David Dadiani, but he never ruled in his own right; during his minority, the government was run by regency presided by his mother, Princess Ekaterina, and in 1857, Mingrelia was placed under a provisional Russian administration. In 1867, Dadiani formally abdicated the throne and Mingrelia was directly incorporated into the Russian Empire. Dadiani mostly lived in Saint Petersburg, being close to the court. He was an officer in the Imperial Russian Army, distinguished himself in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), and retired with the rank of major-general. Early life Niko Dadiani was born in Zugdidi, Mingrelia's capital, in 1847. Niko was six years old in August 1853 when his father died, and he became Prince of Mingrelia as an autonomous subject of the Russian Empire. With the approval of Tsar Nicholas I, Niko was placed under the regency of his mother, Princess Ekaterina; the Russian bureaucrat Kornely Borozdin was assigned to him as a tutor. The regency council also included Niko's paternal uncles, Grigol and Konstantin. The Dadiani family's luxurious life in Zugdidi was interrupted by the Crimean War, during the course of which, in 1854, the Ottoman troops advanced into Mingrelia. The Russian forces temporarily withdrew from the principality; Princess Ekaterina and Prince Niko took refuge in the mountains of Lechkhumi, at the monastery of Tsageri. After the war, in 1856, the mother and the son repaired to Moscow to attend the coronation of Tsar Alexander II and then followed the imperial family to St. Petersburg. On this occasion, Niko—enlisted at his birth as a cornet in the Life Guards Cossack regiment—was made aide-de-camp to the Tsar and commissioned as a poruchik in the Life Guards Caucasian Squadron of His Imperial Majesty's Personal Escort. End of the principality Niko remained in St. Petersburg, enjoying the favor of the imperial family even after his mother hurried home due to a peasant revolt in Mingrelia in May 1857. The revolt was exploited by the Russian government as a pretext to recall Princess Ekaterina back to St. Petersburg and to place the hitherto autonomous principality under a provisional Russian administration.