further indignities at the hands of his barbarous despoiler.
On his arrival at Tehran in September, 1796, Aga Mahomed dismissed his troops to their homes for the winter, requiring them to reassemble under his banners in the spring of the following year. During his Georgian campaign the Kajar Shah had put to death all the Russians whom he had taken in Tiflis; and he had given orders for seizing all of that nation who were to be found at Enzelli, Saleean, Bakoo and Derbend. The result was that twenty-seven sailors were sent loaded with iron chains to Tehran. The first punishment inflicted on these men after their arrival at the capital was to force them to put out the eyes of forty Persians who had been condemned to be blinded for not joining the army. They were then suffered to wander about the town, living on such charity as they could obtain from the few Armenian inhabitants of the town. A week after his return from Khorassan, Aga Mahomed vented upon these helpless sailors the rage with which he had been inspired by the successes of Count Valerian Souboff. They were all seized and strangled.[1] We are told by the French traveller who was at Tehran at the time of this execution, that he expressed to Haji Ibraheem, the prime minister of Aga Mahomed, his surprise that the Shah should limit his reprisals on the Russians to this act, and should delay to march in person to repair the disasters of the war. The reply was that there was no hurry in the matter; that orders had been issued not to undertake anything of importance during the winter; and that on the return of spring a few months would suffice to chastise the Musco-
- ↑ Voyage de M. Olivier. Vol. ii. p. 141.
