'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎581] (648/714)

THE ARMY
.581
The highest authority, however, that I can quote is that of Sir
j[ Rawlinson, who was himself some years later an officer in the
Persian army, and who enjoyed unrivalled opportunities of forming
a judgment upon the matter. These are his words :—
It can be proved that whatever benefit Persia may have derived, as
far as regards, the centralisation of the power of her monarch, from the
introduction into her armies of European discipline, she has been, as a
substantive power, progressively weakened by the change, and rendered
less capable of sustaining pressure from without. ... To a nation
devoid of organisation in every other department of Government a
regular army was impossible. It thus happened that, notwithstanding
the admirable material for soldiery which was offered by the hardy
peasantry of Azerbaijan, and the still hardier mountaineers of
Kermanshah ; notwithstanding the aptitude of the officers to receive
instruction ; notwithstanding that a due portion of physical courage
appertained generally to the men, the disciplined forces of Persia were
from the epoch of their first creation contemptible. Beyond drill and
exercise they never had anything in common with the regular armies
of Europe and India. System was entirely wanted, whether in regard
to pay, clothing, food, carriage, equipage, commissariat, promotion, or
command. At the same time a false confidence arose of a most
exaggerated and dangerous character ; the resources of the country
were lavished on the army to an extent which grievously impoverished
it; above all, the tribes, the chivalry of the Empire, the forces with
which Nadir overran the East, and which, ever yielding but ever
present, surrounded, under Agha Mohammed Khan, the Russian armies
with a desert, were destroyed. Truly, then, may it be said that, in
presenting Persia with the boon of a so-called regular army in order
to reclaim her from her unlawful loves with France, we clothed her in
the robe of Nessus. 1
After the disappearance of the greater part of the English
detachment in 1815, Abbas Mirza once again hankered tor the
3. Period of fleshpots of France ; but his resolution to employ officers
decline 0 f that nationality was soon abandoned, and Colonel
D'Arcy was sent instead in charge of some Persian youths for
instruction in England. Some French officers were, however,
engaged to train the Kurds in the army of Mohammed Ali Mirza,
the eldest son of Fath Ali and Governor of Kermanshah, and a
regiment of lancers was formed in Azerbaijan by a Colonel Diou-
ville, 2 and was passed on in a state of decline to Lieutenant Willock.
1 England and Russia in the East, pp. 30-1.
2 Vide his work, Voyage en Perse (1812-13), 2 vols., 1819.