'A second journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople, between the years 1810 and 1816. With a journal of the voyage by the Brazils and Bombay to the Persian Gulf. Together with an account of the proceedings of His Majesty's embassy under Sir Gore Ouseley, Bart. K.L.S. With two maps, and engravings from the designs of the author.' [‎215] (258/516)

PERSIAN COWARDICE.
fighting, where every man, independent of the other, first took care of
his own safety before he thought of killing his enemy, they did not
relish our system. A Persian talking to one of our officers upon that
subject, said very ingenuously, " If there was no dying in the case, how
gloriously the Persians would fight!" Their ideas of courage are indeed
totally different from ours. They look upon courage as a quality which
a man may have or have not, as he may feel at the moment. One of
the King's generals, who has the reputation of being a courageous man,
was not ashamed to own that he and a large body of troops had been
kept at bay by two Russian soldiers, who alternately fired their muskets
at them, and at length obliged them to move away. In talking of the
Russians, they say that they are so divested of feeling, that rather than
retire, they die on the spot.
Abbas Mirza himself is said to be personally brave, and that in
his different encounters with the Russians he has risked himself further
than necessity required. He punishes cowardice, an instance of which
we witnessed. One of his Generals, Mahomed Beg, had on some
emergency quitted his post, and run away. The Prince degraded him
from his rank, tied his hands behind his back, put a wooden sword by
his side, seated him on an ass, with his face towards the tail, and thus
paraded him through Tabriz.
After the first visits of ceremony were over, the Ambassador scarcely
passed a day for a month after, without spending several hours in the
company of the Prince, when formality and etiquette were laid aside,
and when His Royal Highness entered into all the details of his govern
ment without the smallest reserve. Although sincerity be not the virtue
of his country, and although we were warned not to forget that he also
was a Persian, yet such appearance of candour was there in his manner,
accompanied by such engaging affability, that we all permitted our
selves to believe that he was as superior in mind to the rest of his
countrymen, as he certainly was in his exterior qualities. Seldom have
I met, in any country, a man so fascinating as Abbas Mirza. His
countenance is always animated, his smile is agreeable, and his conver-