'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎187] (222/714)

POLITICS AND COMMERCE OF KHOEASAN
187
while, but were too busy elsewhere to trouble themselves with Astra-
bad ; and thus a second time it slipped out of their possession.
years later the attempt was again renewed. Forster, the
first English traveller who made the overland journey from India
Agha to Europe in 1784, and who passed this way, relates
Moham- an interesting tale of a Russian squadron, whose com-
manding officer in 1781 commenced the erection of a
large fortified building on the shore at Ashraf, the site of the famous
palace of Shah Abbas near the coast, about twenty-five miles west
of Gez. They had reckoned, however, without their host; for
Agha Mohammed Khan Kajar, afterwards Shah of Persia, and at
that time engaged in establishing his authority in AEazanderan,
soon appeared upon the scene. Expressing great pleasure at what
he saw, he invited the Russian officers to dinner, made them
prisoners, and only released them on condition of the guns being
removed and the fort razed to the ground. He even appealed to
the Russian Government for formal amends. 1 Thus ended the
third Russian attempt to gain a foothold upon the mainland of
Persia in the south-eastern angle of the Caspian. The fourth attempt,
which I have sketched, is being pursued with less abruptness and
with greater patience. Its solution may perhaps be visible in the
time of many now living.
Next I come to the reasons which have actuated the Russians in
their long-sustained desire to obtain an entrance into this corner of
j . the Persian mainland. It is not that Astrabad of itself
-bieasons of • i • -i i
Eussian provides either the most convenient or a very easy avenue
activity j nvas j on _ j n ^ ie g rg £ j ia || > 0 f this century different
and more exaggerated opinions prevailed as to its strategical value.
If a line be drawn from Baku to India it will be found to pass
through Astrabad ; and accordingly this was the line of advance
that was contemplated both by the Emperors Paul and Napoleon,
when they together discussed and planned an overland expedition
against India in 1800 ; and again by General Khruleff when, in the
course of the Crimean war, he submitted a similar programme of
invasion to the Emperor Nicholas. The immediate objectives were
in either case Meshed and Herat; and in those times the best
1 The most complete account of this incident is to be found in Sir J. M'Neill's
Progress and Present Position of Russia in the Past, pp. 33-4. He says that the
Eussian officers were thrown into chains and subsequently whipped down to their
ships. Compare B. Dorn's Caspia (Eussian).