Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/680

 G50 PERSIA [MODERN 1836-1343. and Kandahar and Gliazni were to be recovered, as belonging to the empire of the Safawi dynasty. The advice of the British envoy was dissuasive in this respect, and therefore distasteful. Sir John Campbell, in less than a year after the sovereign s installation, went home, and was succeeded as British envoy by Mr Henry Ellis. The change in personnel signified also a transfer of superintendence of the Persian legation, which passed from the Government in India to the authorities in England. In 1836, on the return home of Mr Ellis, Mr M Neill became charge d affaires. About this time the arrangements for the expedition were matured. It was to commence with a campaign against the Turkmans, Herat being its later destination. The king would command in person, and the army would be formidable in numbers and war material. Such counter- proposals as Mr Ellis had suggested for consideration, in his earnest endeavours to divert the shah from his purpose, had been politely put aside, and the counsels of the war-party had pre vailed. Should the main operations designed be successful, and Herat fall to Persia, it was impossible to foretell the result ; and the case was now more than ever complicated by the action of the Barakzai chiefs of Kandahar, who had sent a mission to Tehran to offer assistance against their Saduzai rival at Herat. Fresh provo cation had, moreover, been given to the shah s Government by the rash and incapable Kamran. About the close of the summer the force moved from Tehran. The royal camp was near Astrabad in November 1836. Food was scarce : barley sold for ten times the usual price, and wheat was not procurable for any money. The troops were dissatisfied, and, being kept without pay and on short rations, took to plundering. There had been operations on the banks of the Gurgan, and the Turkmans had been driven from one of their strongholds ; but little or no progress had been made in the subjection of these marauders, and the Heratis had sent word that all they could do was to pay tribute, and, if that were insufficient, the shah had better march to Herat. A military council was held at Shahrud, when it was decided to return to the capital and set out again in the spring. Accordingly the troops dispersed, and the sovereign s presence at Tehran was taken advantage of by the British minister to renew his attempts in the cause of peace. But remonstrance was vain, and, although on the present occasion Count Simonich ostensibly aided Mr M Neill, no argument was of any avail to divert the monarch from his pur pose. He again set out in the summer, and, invading the Herat territory in November 1837, began the siege on the 23d of that month. Siege of Not until September in the following year did the Persian army Herat. withdraw from before the walls of the city ; and then the move ment only took place on the action of the British Government. Ordinary pressure and argument had failed. It had become neces sary to use strong language, and to resort to strong measures, the purport of which could not be mistaken. Mr M Neill, who had joined the Persian camp on 6th April, left it again on 7th June. He had in this interval done all in his power to effect a reasonable agreement between the contending parties by personal communi cation with Afghans in Herat as well as with the shah and his minister ; but both in this respect and in the matter of a com mercial treaty with England, then under negotiation, his efforts had been met with evasion and latent hostility, and this last feeling had been notably evinced in the seizure and violent treatment of a messenger bearing an official communication from a foreign Govern ment to the British minister at Tehran. The Russian envoy, who had appeared among the tents of the besieging army almost simul taneously with his English colleague, no sooner found himself alone in his diplomacy than he resumed his aggressive counsels, and little more than a fortnight had elapsed since Mr M Neill s departure when a vigorous assault, planned, it is asserted, by Count Simonich himself, was made upon Herat. The Persians attacked at five points, at one of which they would in all likelihood have been successful had not the Afghans been aided by Eldred Pottinger, a young Englishman, who with the science of an artillery officer combined a courage and determination which inevitably influenced his subordinates. Through his exertions the assailants were beaten back, as they were also independently at the other points noted. Still the garrison was disheartened ; and, had not Colonel Stoddart s arrival on llth August to threaten the shah with British inter vention put a stop to further action, there is no knowing what mischief might have resulted from the incompetence and intrigues of Kamran and his advisers. As it happened, Colonel Stoddart s firm attitude and refusal to allow any but British mediators to decide the pending dispute won the day ; and that officer was a&quot;ble to report that on 9th September Muhammad Shah had &quot;mounted iiis horse&quot; and gone from before the walls of the beleaguered city. The siege of Herat was the great event in the reign of Muhammad Shah. It lasted for nearly ten months ; and the story of its pro gress is a strange record of a desultory campaign in which intrigue volves a question foreign to the present narrative. Persia s con nexion with Afghanistan can only be partial, and confined to Herat, Kabul, Kandahar, or one section of the country only. A united Afghanistan would always be distasteful to her. The remainder of the king s reign was marked by new difficul ties with the British Government ; the rebellion of Agha Khan Mahlati, otherwise known as the chief of the Assassins ; a new- rupture with Turkey ; the banishment of the asafu d-daulah, governor of Khurasan, followed by the insurrection and defeat of his son ; and the rise of the sect of the Babis. The first of these only calls for any detailed account. In the demands of the British Government was included the Diffi- cession by Persia of places such as Ghurian, Farah, and Sabzawar, culty which had been taken during the war from the Afghans, as well as with reparation for the violence offered to the courier of the British Englai legation. The shah, in ill-humour at his fruitless expedition to Herat, deferred compliance with these requisitions, and indeed sought tp evade them altogether. M Neill gave a certain time for decision, at the end of which, no satisfactory reply having reached him, he broke off diplomatic relations, ordered the British officers lent to the shah to proceed towards Baghdad en route to India, and retired to Arzrum with the members of his mission. On the Persian side, charges were made against M Neill, and a special envoy, sent to England to support them, was instructed to represent the so- called injuries which British diplomatic action had inflicted on the shah. An endeavour was at the same time made to interest the cabinets of Europe in influencing the British Government on behalf of Persia. The envoy managed to obtain an interview with the minister of foreign affairs in London, who, in July 1839, supplied him with a statement, fuller than before, of all English demands upon his country. Considerable delay ensued, but the outcome of the whole proceedings was not only acceptance but fulfilment of all the engagements contracted. In the meantime the island of Karak had been taken possession of by an expedition from India. On llth October 1841 a new mission arrived at Tehran from London, under Mr (now Sir) John M Neill, to renew diplomatic relations. It was most cordially received by the shah, and it need scarcely be added that, as one of its immediate results, Karak was evacuated by the British-Indian troops. There had been a long diplomatic correspondence in Europe on the proceedings of Count Simonich and other Russian officers at Herat. Among the papers is a very important letter from Count Nesselrode to Count Pozzo di Borgo in which Russia declares herself to be the first to counsel the shah to acquiesce in the demand made upon him, because she found &quot;justice on the side of England &quot; and &quot;wrong on the side of Persia.&quot; She withdrew her agent from Kandahar and would &quot;not have with the Afghans any relations but those of commerce, and in no wise any political interests.&quot; She recalled to the English cabinet her wishes before expressed. &quot;To re-establish promptly the relations of friendship between the courts of London and of Tehran ; to put an end to the hostile measures adopted in the Persian Gulf; to abstain from disturbing the tranquillity of the people of the centre of Asia by nourishing their animosities ; to be contented with competing in industry in those vast countries, but not to engage there in a struggle for political influence ; to respect the independence of the intermediate countries which separate &quot; her own from British territory. Such, it was emphatically stated, was &quot; the system which England and Russia have a common interest invariably to pursue, in order to prevent the possibility of a conflict between these two great powers, which, that they may continue friends, require to remain each within its own limits, and not to advance against each other in the centre of Asia.&quot; 1 Agha Khan s rebellion was fostered by the defection to his cause of a large portion of the force sent against him ; but he yielded at last to the local authorities of Karman and fled the province and country. He afterwards resided many years at Bombay, where, while maintaining among natives a quasi-spiritual character, he is better known among Europeans for his doings on the turf. The quarrel with Turkey, though specific in the case of indi vidual actors, was generally about frontier relations and trans gressions of the border. Eventually the matter was referred to an Anglo-Russian commission, of which Colonel Williams (since Sir Fenwick Williams of Kars) was president. A massacre of Persians at Karbala might have seriously complicated the dispute, but, after a first burst of indignation and call for vengeance, an expression of the regret of the Ottoman Government was accepted as a sufficient apology for the occurrence. The rebellion of the asafu d-daulah, maternal uncle of the shah, was punished by exile, while his son, after giving trouble to his opponents, and once gaining a victory over them, took shelter with the Turkmans. Sa id Muhammad All, founder of the Babis, was born at The Shi raz about 1810. 2 Adopting a life of seclusion, and practising Babis. a kind of exaggerated Sufism, he followed for some time the call ing of a dervish, and when at Kazimain near Baghdad he openly asserted his pretensions as a prophet. The Turkish authorities 1 Correspondence relating to Persia and Afghanistan, London, 1839. The annexation of Siud and the Panjab will, it is presumed, be given as excuses for the partial absorption of Turkestan. But the cases are in no way analogous. The occupation by Russia of the Persian island of Ashurada in the south-east corner of the Caspian followed the British reverses in Kabul of 1841. 2 Lady Sheil. Gobineau says 1824.