A HISTOKY OF PERSIA.
100
second object of the mission that of endeavouring to unite Persia with Turkey against Kussia the Persian minister listened to and agreed with the to
respect
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 But under this apparent calm, a feeling of sovereign. 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. natural, but they
had
it
These feelings were only
might not have led
to
any practical result
not been for the tyrannical folly of Aga Mahomed Unwarned by all the lessons which the history of
himself.
his country afforded, that the patience even of the Persian
people had a limit, and that
when men were kept in remedy into their own
terror of their lives they took the
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,
sion of the place.
and that he had only
With
to take posses-
this object in view
he hurried