respect to the second object of the mission—that of endeavouring to unite Persia with Turkey against Russia the Persian minister listened to and agreed with the arguments of the Frenchman, and promised on the part of his master that an ambassador should be sent to Constantinople.
Aga Mahomed Khan had now re-established order throughout his dominions; the roads were secure for travellers and for caravans; the taxes were paid with regularity; and hostages were ready to answer for the continuance of the distant chiefs in their duty to the sovereign. But under this apparent calm, a feeling of discontent was spreading at the idea of being governed, and even made to tremble, by one whose physical condition ought, according to the customs of Persia, to have excluded him from the throne. These feelings were only natural, but they might not have led to any practical result had it not been for the tyrannical folly of Aga Mahomed himself. Unwarned by all the lessons which the history of his country afforded, that the patience even of the Persian people had a limit, and that when men were kept in terror of their lives they took the remedy into their own hands, the infatuated monarch went on in his career of cruelty and tyranny until it was brought to a close by the dagger of the midnight assassin.
In the spring of 1797, Aga Mahomed quitted Tehran for the last time, and led his army towards the Araxes. When within a few miles of that river he learned that the governor of the fortress of Sheeshah, in the province of Karabagh, had been compelled by the inhabitants to abandon his post, and that he had only to take possession of the place. With this object in view he hurried
