Page:England & Russia in Central Asia,Vol-I.djvu/214

194 ENGLAND AND RUSSIA IN OENTEAL ASIA. force of cavalry proceeded by land to the vicinity of Derbend, wbere the whole army concentrated without accident. Derbend surrendered after a short siege ; and with Derbend in her possession Russia held the most important position on the western shores of the Caspian. She did not, however, acquire permanent possession of it until fifty years after the death of Nadir. The Russian Government then entered upon a course of intrigues with the Porte and the Prince of Georgia, which had as their object the dismemberment of the Persian Empire. It was with no half-hearted design, nor with any vague object before it, that the Russian Government concluded treaties of the very highest importance with the rival and the tributary of the Shah. The triumph of the Afghan adventurers, the apparently complete disruption of the power of the Suffavean rulers, the general disorders prevailing in the State, the insubordination of Turcoman and Arab vassals, and all those other disturbing elements which seemed to have permanently destroyed the vitality of the Persian power, inspired its ambitious neighbors with a belief in the possibility of dividing the spoil amongst themselves. The prize which Peter, and at a later period the Empress Catherine, aimed at securing was no slight one. It was not so much a mere question of obtaining a strong frontier in the Caucasian range, or even of placing Russian administrators in Georgia and Daghestan, as it was of constructing round the southern shores of the Caspian a belt of provinces immediately dependent upon the Czar. The partition treaty between Russia and Turkey during the reign of