city continued to be the chief town of a government until the year 1860, when it was supplanted by Bakoo. Shumakhi now presents to view the melancholy spectacle of an immense collection of ruined houses, amidst which a few of its former inhabitants continue to linger. From here the Kajar king pursued his way to his capital, where he at length consented to undergo the ceremony of being publicly crowned as Shah of Persia at Tehran.[1] According to the Persian historian, he had been crowned ten years before at Astrabad.
In the meantime, the power with which the Czar of Georgia had chosen to ally himself, was taking measures to reassert his authority. Heraclius had not failed to apprise the Russian governor[2] of the adjoining province of the demand made of him by the Shah of Persia; but that functionary was not prepared to see Aga Mahomed's threats so soon followed by acts, nor to find him advance upon Tiflis while Sheeshah and Erivan still held out behind his army. When the Empress Catherine was made aware of what had taken place, she gave orders to the officer in command of the troops on the frontier to attack the town of Derbend, which place was accordingly invested. Before its walls the Russian army passed the winter of 1795-96, and in the spring of the latter year Count Valerian Souboff crossed the Terek with reinforcements. This Russian general, who had performed distinguished services under Potemkin at the siege of Bender, had now under his orders an army of thirty-five thousand men; and after having made himself master of some of the outworks of Derbend, he summoned the
