time there was little to disturb the even current of affairs, or to change the character of our relations towards the Persian state. It was the policy of Great Britain, by strengthening the military resources of the country, to render Persia an insurmountable barrier against the invasion of India by any European army. But by this time France had ceased to be formidable; and what was ostensibly defence against the powers of Europe, was, in reality, defence against the ambition of the Czar. It is doubtful, however, how far our policy was successful. We supplied the Persian army with English arms and English discipline; our officers drilled the native troops after the newest European fashions, and for some time the Crown Prince, Abbas Meerza, was delighted with his new plaything. But the best-informed authorities concur in opinion that the experiment was a failure; and that the real military strength of the empire was not augmented by this infusion of English discipline into the raw material of the Persian army.[94] It has been said, indeed, and with undeniable truth, by one who was himself for many years among the instructors of the Persian army, that “when Persia again came into collision with Russia in 1826, her means and power as a military nation were positively inferior to those which she possessed at the close of her former struggle.”
From the date of the convention of Goolistan, up to the year 1826, there was at least an outward observance of peace between the Russian and Persian states. The peace, however, was but a hollow one, destined soon to be broken. The irritation of a disputed boundary had ever since the ratification of the treaty of Goolistan kept the two states in a restless, unsettled condition of ill-disguised animosity; and now it broke out at last into acts of mutual defiance. It is hard to say whether Russia or Persia struck the first unpardonable blow. The conduct of the former had been insolent and offensive—designed perhaps to goad the weaker state into open resentment, and to furnish a pretext for new wars, to be followed by new acquisitions of Eastern territory. Both parties were prepared, by a long series of mutual provocations, for the now inevitable contest. It needed very little to bring them into open collision.
In Georgia there had been frightful misrule. The officers of the Christian government had wantonly and insanely outraged the religious feelings of its Mussulman subjects; and now an outburst of fierce Mahomedan zeal in the adjoining kingdom declared how dangerous had been the interference. The Moollahs of Persia rose as one man. Under pain of everlasting infamy and everlasting perdition, they called upon the Shah to resent the insults which had been put upon their religion. The mosques rang with excited appeals to the feelings of all true believers; and every effort was made by the excited ecclesiastics to stimulate the temporal authorities to the declaration of a holy war.
The King, however, shrank from the contest. He had no ambition to face again in the field the formidable European enemy who had so often scattered the flower of the Persian army, and trodden over the necks of the vanquished to the acquisition of new dominions. But the importunity of the Moollahs was not to be withstood. He pledged himself that if Gokchah—one of the disputed tracts of country occupied by the Russians—were not restored, he would declare war against the Muscovite power. Convinced that the Russian Government would yield this strip of land, acquired as it was without justice, and retained without profit, the Shah believed that the condition was, in effect, an evasion of the pledge. The error was soon manifest. It was not in the nature of Russia to yield an inch of country righteously or unrighteously acquired—profitably or unprofitably retained. Gokchah was not restored. The Moollahs became more and more clamorous. The Shah was threatened with the forfeiture of all claims to paradisaical bliss: and the war was commenced.
Excited by the appeals of the Moollahs, the Persians flung themselves into the contest with all the ardour and ferocity of men burning to wipe out in the blood of their enemies the insults and indignities that had been heaped upon them. They rose up and massacred all the isolated Russian garrisons and outposts in their reach. Abbas Meerza took the field at the head of an army of 40,000 men; and at the opening of the campaign the disputed territory of Gokchah, with Balikloo and Aberan, were recovered by their old masters.
These successes, however, were but short-lived. The son of the Prince Royal, Mahomed Meerza, a youth more impetuous than skilful in the field, soon plunged the divisions he commanded into a sea of overwhelming disaster. The Prince himself, not more fortunate, was in the same month of September, 1826, beaten by the Russian General, Paskewitch, in open battle, with a loss of 1200 men. The war was resumed in the following spring, and continued throughout the year with varying success; but the close of it witnessed the triumph of the Russians. Erivan and Tabreez fell into their hands.[95] Enfeebled and dispirited, the Persians shrunk from the continuance of the struggle. The intervention of Great Britain was gladly accepted, and Persia submitted to the terms of a humiliating peace.
After some protracted negotiations, a new treaty, superseding that of Goolistan, was signed at Toorkomanchai, in February, 1828, by General Paskewitch and Abbas Meerza. By this treaty, Persia ceded to the Czar the Khanates of Erivan and Nakhichevan; and consented to the recognition of the line of frontier dictated by the Russian Government. The frontier line between the two empires, laid down in the fourth article of the treaty, commenced at the first of the Ottoman States nearest to the little Ararat mountain, which it crossed to the south of the Lower Karasson, following the course of that river till it falls into the Araxes opposite Sherour, and then extending along the latter river as far as Abbas-Abad.[96] The line of frontier then followed the course of the Araxes to a point twenty-one wersts beyond the ford of Ledl-boulak, when it struck off in a straight line drawn across the plain of Moghan, to the bed of the river Bolgaron, twenty-one wersts above the point of confluence of the two Rivers Adinabazar and Sarakamyshe; then passing over the summit of Ojilkoir and other mountains, it extended to the source of the River Atara, and followed the stream until it falls into the Caspian Sea.
Such was the boundary laid down in the treaty of Toorkomanchai. The other articles granted an indemnity to Russia of eighty millions of roubles for the expenses of the war—yielded to that state the sole right of having armed vessels on the Caspian—recognised the inheritance of Abbas Meerza—and granted an amnesty to the inhabitants of Aderbijan. To Persia this treaty was deeply humiliating; but the manifestoes of the Emperor, with characteristic mendacity, boasted of its moderation, and declared that its ends were merely the preservation of peace and the promotion of commerce. “For us,” it was said, “one of the principal results of this peace consists in the security which it gives to one part of our frontiers. It is solely in this light that we consider the utility of the new countries which Russia has just acquired. Every part of our conquests that did not tend to this end was restored by our orders, as soon as the conditions of the treaty were published. Other essential advantages result from the stipulations in favour of commerce, the free development of which we have always considered as one of the most influential causes of industry, and at the same time as the true guarantee of solid peace, founded on an entire reciprocity of wants and interests.”
The hypocrisy of all this is too transparent to call for comment. Russia had thus extended her frontier largely to the eastward; and England had not interfered to prevent the completion of an act, by which it has been said that Persia was “delivered, bound hand and foot, to the Court of St. Petersburgh.”[97] How far the British Government was bound to assist Persia in the war of 1826–27, still remains an open question. The treaty of Teheran pledged Great Britain, in the event of a war between Persia and any European State, either to send an army from India to assist the Shah, or to grant an annual subsidy of 200,000 tomauns during the continuance of the war; but this article was saddled with the condition that the war was to be one in nowise provoked by any act of Persian aggression. A question, therefore, arose, as to whether the war of 1826–27 was provoked by the aggressions of Persia or of Russia. Each party pronounced the other the aggressor. The Persian Government maintained that the unjust and violent occupation of Gokchah by a Russian force furnished a legitimate casus belli; but the Russian manifestoes declared that, “in the midst of friendly negotiations, and when positive assurances gave us the hope of preserving the relations of good neighbourhood with Persia, the tranquillity of our people was disturbed on the frontiers of the Caucasus, and a sudden invasion violated the territory of the Emperor in contempt of solemn treaties.” Russian statesmen have never been wanting in ability to make the worse appear the better reason. Whatever overt acts may have been committed, it is certain that the real provocation came not from the Mahomedan, but from the Christian State.[98] The backwardness