Annotated Copy of Persia and the Persian Question by George Curzon, with Inserted Papers [‎410v] (823/1814)

576
PERSIA
resources of Nadir were unequal to the situation, was shown by
his unsuccessful sieges of Busrah and Baghdad, neither of which
possessed fortifications of any strength. How^ completely the
Persian army still retained its cavalry organisation is shown by
the statement of Nadir’s biographer, however exaggerated, that
out of the 160,000 persons, soldiers and camp-followers, who
composed the invading army at Delhi in Februai} l/o9, there was
not a single individual on foot. 1
The military spirit which the genius of Nadir Shah had to some
extent revived was kept alive by the Ivajai monarch, Agha
Ali Mohammed Shah, whose quite uncommon attainments
Shah ' have been somewhat obscured in history by the brutal
ferocity of his acts. But it sank to a very low ebb under his
successor Path Ali Shah, who liked to stay at home and multiply
the royal stock, and whose idea of kingly majesty was summed up
in receiving a foreign ambassador in a blaze of jewels upon the
Peacock Throne. He is even said to have tumbled off his horse
with fright at the only engagement in which he assisted. In his
reign, however, the military interest was shifted from Teheran to
Tabriz, and from the sovereign to the Heir Apparent, Abbas Mirza;
and the rivalries of England, France and Russia, ushered in that
epoch of foreign, and especially of British, military tutorship, of
which I have undertaken to speak in outline.
It was to Abbas Mirza, the Vali-Ahd, residing at Tabriz as
Governor-General of Azerbaijan, that Persia owed the reintroduc-
Army of tion of European discipline, to which, since the abortive ex-
Abbas periment of the Sherleys, exactly two centuries before, she
i. French had been a stranger. Stationed in the frontier province,
which from the opening years of the century was exposed
to the full brunt of Russian attack (Persia and Russia being then
at war), he realised that without foreign assistance he could make
no headway against a European foe. It was from Russian instruc
tors that the first lessons in the simplest platoon exercises were
taken ; the Prince labouring so zealously that, in order to over
come the prejudices of his countrymen, he donned uniform and
went through the daily drills himself, compelling his nobles to
1 The character of Persian cavalry engagements in those days, and, indeed,
(where they occur) down to the present time, is well expressed by Sir J. Shell,
when he compares the fighting of Persian horsemen to that of Persian dogs, altei-
nately advancing and retiring, snarling, growling and yelling, but rarely coming
to close quarters. (Lady Shell’s Glimjises of Life, fyc., p. 325.)
his
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England
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to Persia in the folia
Indian officers, who
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England, in li
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m
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