consigned his son a hundred times to perdition, the king determined to send his Vizeer of Foreign Affairs to London, to press the British ministers to use their influence with Russia for the reestablishment of an honourable peace; but the mission of the Vizeer was postponed, pending the reply to some communications which had been already addressed to his Britannic Majesty's Ministers. General Paskiewitch, in the meantime, relieved the garrison of Etchmiadzeen, and the Persian commander retired to the south of the Araxes.
Towards the close of the September, the fort of Sirdarabad, near Mount Ararat, was deserted by its garrison, and fell into the hands of the Russians, and as General Paskiewitch was strengthened by the arrival of five thousand fresh troops, as well as by that of a siege-train, he now once more undertook the siege of Erivan. By the fall of Abbassabad and Sirdarabad, Erivan was now isolated, and it was the only post wanting to secure to the Russians the possession of the portion of Persia which lay to the south of the river Araxes. Up to this point of the campaign, the Russian commanders had owed their successes more to the supineness of the Shah and to the discontent of some of his subjects, than to any military talent or any remarkable energy displayed by themselves. But for the treachery of the garrisons of the above-mentioned two fortresses, it is probable that the campaign of 1827 would have left the belligerents in the same position relatively to each other in which it had found them at its opening. But fortune favoured General Paskiewitch, and the utterly infatuated conduct of the Shah rendered it only needful for the Imperial officers to come and see and conquer. When the heats
