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FALL OF HERAT. 431 troops of that power should occupy the territory of Herat. His intention, therefore, was to retire from Affghanistan after Herat should have been taken and placed in the hands of a ruler who would of his own accord acknowledge himself to be a subject of the Shah, and who would strike coin in his Persian Majesty's name. But to effect this it was necessary in the first place to take Herat, and this the Persian troops under Prince Sultan Murad showed themselves to be unable to do. The prime minister could not afford to lose time, and he therefore despatched to the Persian camp before Herat, M. Biihler, who had been an officer in the French engineers, and who was now in the service of the Shah. The famous Affghan fortress was not, as on a former occasion, defended by an Eldred Pottinger, and it accordingly fell before the regular approaches set on foot by an European scientific officer. But by the time Herat had fallen, it was too late for the Sedr-Azem to avoid the consequences of the rash course he had determined to pursue. Orders had been issued in India for despatching a hostile expedition to the shores of the Persian Gulf, and the English Govern- ment had now the peculiar task to perform, of directing a war against a power which it had hitherto been the policy of England to sustain, and the stability of which, notwithstanding the conduct of its Minister, was still an object of concern to the Ministers of the Queen. It was no easy matter to make war on Persia without incurring the risk of bringing Persia altogether to destruction. The tribes of the southern portion of the Shah's dominions, and those of the coast of the Persian Gulf, would have been only too happy to throw off all allegiance to the