Page:Historyofpersiaf00watsrich.djvu/254

 of summer had subsided, Fetteh All Shah retired to Tehran, having positively refused to dole out any more money for the purpose of enabling his son to carry on the war. The resources of Tabreez were now exhausted, and the prince, therefore, with much reluctance dismissed the greater part of his troops to their homes for the winter, thus leaving the capital of Azerbaeejan undefended. Of this state of things General Paskiewitch was early made aware through the Armenians who corresponded with Archbishop Narses, and a corps of his army was accordingly pushed forward to Marend on the south of the Araxes, a town forty miles distant from Tabreez. The gloomy aspect of affairs seems at length to have broken the firmness of Hassan Khan, for we read that only eight days after the opening of the trenches before his city for the last time by the Russians, the hero of a hundred fights surrendered himself, and his brother's fortress, to General Paskiewitch, who thus earned the title of Count of Erivan.

A greater calamity was in reserve to punish the avarice and supineness of the Shah. Sensible when too late of the terrible consequences that were likely to follow the dismissal of his forces for the winter, the crown-prince made many fruitless attempts to reassemble his soldiers, and was on his way from Khoi to Tabreez with the few troops remaining to him, when, at the distance of one day's march from the place, he learned to his horror that its gates had been thrown open to Prince Aristoff, who with a force of 5,000 men had advanced from Marend. The dismay of the prince on receiving this intelligence may be more easily conceived than described. His wives and children had been left in Tabreez, and