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 ATROCITJES COMMITTED BY PERSIAN SOLDIERS. 303 soldiers. But these men were then beyond being influenced by an appeal to motives of religion or of humanity. They used to strike the children or to kill them, and the women whom they left in possession of life were stripped of all their clothes, even of articles so insignificant that a Jew would not have purchased them for the smallest copper coin. The Persian who is my authority* for this statement exclaims : " If I were about to die of hunger, I would not again accompany one of those plundering parties, to witness such enormities." He adds, in a burst of honest indignation: "May the fathers of these Serbaz burn in hell ! " On the 28th of December two hundred naked and starving wretches, all of them claiming descent from the lawgiver of Mecca, came to the Shah's camp from the villages of Ghorat, to implore help from the king ; but his religious Majesty passed them without having deigned to acknowledge their presence by the slightest notice. On the 29th of the same month one of the bastions of Herat fell into the hands of the Persians, the troops who won it having been conducted by a deserter from Prince Kamran ; but the Affghans were roused to suitable measures of defence, and retook the bastion from the Persians. The siege lingered on month after month, the pride of the Shah preventing him from giving up the enterprise he had undertaken, and the besieged being animated by the perseverance of the energetic Vizeer, and by the skilful efforts of Lieutenant Eldred Pottinger. In the spring of the year 1838, Mr. McNeill, the English Minister at the Persian court, arrived in the camp of the besiegers, and endeavoured to persuade the king to
 * ARAB ALI KHAN.