The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 13

by Unknown

His uncle, alarmed at his increasing power, sought his friendship. He addressed a kind letter to him, and proposed that he should enter the service of Shah Tamasp, and aid that Prince in expelling the Afghans from Persia. Nadir pretended to listen to this overture, and earnestly desired that the King should grant him a pardon for his past offences. This was easily obtained; and he went to Khelat to receive it. He appears to have always deemed the Governor of that place as the chief obstacle to his rise; and at this moment he laid a plan to destroy him and to seize his fortress. He completely succeeded in both; and, after having slain his uncle with his own hand, he proceeded to employ the means he had acquired by this crime in overthrowing the Afghan ruler of Khorasan. This popular attack upon the enemies of his country enabled him to obtain a second pardon from Shah Tamasp, whose service he entered, and to whose cause he brought a great accession of strength and reputation.

Shah Tamasp early entertained the greatest jealousy of Nadir: and upon his disobeying a mandate he had sent him to return from an expedition on which he was engaged, the weak monarch ventured to proclaim him a rebel and a traitor. The indignant chief, the moment he heard of these proceedings, marched against the court, which he soon compelled to submit on the terms he chose to dictate. From the occurrence of this open rupture we may date the annihilation of the little power Tamasp had ever enjoyed. Nadir continued to treat him with respect till he deemed the time mature for his usurpation of the throne; but we discover that, as early as his first expedition into Khorasan, he began to prepare the minds of his countrymen for his future elevation.

Like Ardisheer, the founder of the Sassanian race of Persian kings, he had his visions of future grandeur. He saw, we are told, in one of these, a water-fowl and a white fish with four horns; he dreamt that he shot the bird; and, after all his attendants had failed in their attempts to seize the extraordinary fish, he stretched out his hand and caught it with the greatest ease. The simple fact of his dreaming of a bird and a fish, he was informed by flattering astrologers, was a certain presage of his attaining imperial power; and his historian has had a less difficult task in discovering, from subsequent events, that the four horns of the fish were types of the kingdoms of Persia, Khaurizm, India, and Tartary, which were all destined to be conquered by this hero. Such trifles are not unworthy of notice; they show the art or superstition of him who uses or believes in them, and portray better than the most elaborate descriptions the character of those minds upon which they make an impression.

The expulsion of the Afghans from Persia seemed the sole effort of the genius of Nadir; and no reward, therefore, appeared too great for the man who was liberating his country from its cruel oppressors. The grant made by Tamasp to this chief, of the four finest provinces of the empire, was considered only as a just recompense for the great services that he had performed. We are told that in the same letter by which Tamasp conveyed the grant of these countries, or, in other words, alienated half his kingdom, his victorious general was requested to assume the title of sultan, and a diadem, richly set with jewels, was sent by one of the noblemen of the court. Nadir accepted all the honors except the title of sultan; that high name he thought would excite envy without conferring benefit; he, however, took advantage of this proffered elevation to the rank of a prince, to exercise one of the most important privileges which attach to monarchs. He directed that his army should be paid in coin brought from the province of Khorasan, and that it should be struck in his own name, which virtually amounted to an assumption of the independent sovereignty of that country.

The armies of the Turks occupied some of the finest parts of the province of Irak and all Azerbaijan. Nadir marched against them as soon as his troops were refreshed from the fatigues they had endured in the pursuit of the Afghans. He encountered the united force of two Turkish pachas on the plains of Hamadan, overthrew them, and made himself master, not only of the city, but of all the country in its vicinity. He hastened to Azerbaijan, where the same success attended him. Tabriz, Ardabil, and all the principal cities of that quarter had surrendered; and the conqueror was preparing to besiege Erivan, the capital of Armenia, when he received from his brother, whom he had left in the government of Khorasan, an account of an alarming rebellion of the Afghans of that province. He hastened to its relief; and his success against the rebels was completed by the reduction of the fortresses of Furrah and Herat. An event occurred, during the siege of the latter city, which marked the barbarous character of this war. Nadir had obtained a victory over a large division of the Afghan force, and resolved to celebrate it with a splendid feast. Among other guests were several prisoners of high rank. During the festivities the heads of three hundred Afghans, who had been slain in the action, were held up on the tops of spears. "At this sight," says the flattering historian of Nadir, "the chiefs of our enemies fixed their eyes upon the ground, and never dared to raise them again, notwithstanding the extraordinary kindness with which they were treated by their great and generous conqueror!"

While Nadir was employed at the siege of Herat the Persian nobles at Ispahan persuaded the weak Tamasp to place himself at the head of an army and march against the Turks, who were again assembling on the frontier. The reverses which the arms of that nation had sustained in Persia had caused a revolution at Constantinople, where the janizaries had first murdered the vizier, and afterward dethroned Achmet, and placed his nephew, Mahmud, upon the throne. To this Prince Nadir had sent an envoy, demanding that the Turks should evacuate the province of Azerbaijan; and Shah Tamasp had sent another with what a Persian historian indignantly terms "a sweet-scented letter of congratulation" upon his elevation to the throne. Before the result of the mission sent by Nadir could be known, Tamasp had marched to besiege Erivan, had retreated from before that fortress, been defeated by a Turkish army, and had lost in one month all that the genius and valor of his general had gained during the preceding season. To render the effects of his weakness complete, the alarmed monarch had agreed to a peace, by which he abandoned the whole of the country beyond the Araxes to the Turks, and ceded five districts of the province of Kirmanshahan to Achmet, the reigning pacha of Bagdad, by whom this treaty was negotiated. The disgrace of this engagement was aggravated by its containing no stipulation for the release of the Persians who had been made prisoners during the war.

The moment that Nadir received accounts of the peace it seems to have occurred to his mind that it afforded an excellent pretext for the consummation of those projects he had so long cherished: but, although bold and impatient, he was compelled to proceed with caution to the extinction of a race of kings to whom obedience had become a habit, and who were at that moment represented by a prince who, though weak and despicable, was endeared to many of his subjects by his misfortunes. His first step was to issue a proclamation, in which he inveighed with bitterness against a treaty which bounded the great empire of Persia by the river Araxes, and left many of the inhabitants of that kingdom prisoners in the hands of cruel enemies. "Such a treaty," he said, "is contrary to the will of Heaven: and the angels who guard the tomb of the holy Ali call aloud for the deliverance of his followers from the bondage in which they are now held by vile heretics."

There is no country, however abject its inhabitants may appear, where the most daring and ambitious can venture to usurp the supreme power without first obtaining a hold on public opinion; we cannot have a stronger proof of this fact, as applicable to Persia, than what we find in the conduct of Nadir upon this memorable occasion. Though that chief had revived the military spirit of his country, and roused a nation sunk in sloth and luxury to great and successful exertion, yet neither this success, the imbecility of Shah Tamasp, nor a reliance upon his own fame and strength could induce him to take the last step of usurpation, until he had, by his arts, excited in the minds of his countrymen that complete contempt for the reigning sovereign, and that pride in his glory, which were likely to make his elevation appear more the accomplishment of their wishes than of his ambition.

At the same time that Nadir published the proclamation which has been mentioned, he addressed letters to all the military chiefs of the country. In that to the Governor of Fars, which has been preserved, he informs him of the great success he has had against the Afghans and of the conquest of Herat. He then proceeds to state the astonishment and indignation with which he has learnt the particulars of the treaty concluded with Turkey. "You will no doubt," he observes, "be rejoiced to hear that, as it was to be hoped from the goodness of God, this peace with the Turks is not likely to endure; and you may rest in expectation of my approach; for, by the blessing of the Most High, I will advance immediately, with an army elated with success, skilled in sieges, numerous as emmets, valiant as lions, and combining with the vigor of youth the prudence of age. Let the cup-bearer," he exclaims, quoting from a popular poet, "tell our enemy, the worshipper of fire, to cover his head with dust, for the water that had departed is returned into its channel." He concludes this letter by threatening, with excommunication and destruction, all Shiahs, or, in other words, all Persians who are adverse to the renewal of hostilities. "Those Shiahs," he observes, "who are backward on this great occasion, and are reconciled to this shameful peace, shall be expelled from the faithful sect and forever counted among its enemies. To slaughter them will be meritorious; to permit their existence impious."

The actions of Nadir corresponded with these declarations. He sent an officer to Constantinople, the duties of whose mission to the Emperor Mahmud were limited to this short message: "Restore the provinces of Persia or prepare for war." A messenger was deputed to Achmet, the Pacha of Bagdad, to apprise him that "the deliverer of Persia" was approaching. A peace had been concluded with the Russians, by which it was stipulated that they should abandon all the conquests they had made on the shores of the Caspian; and Nadir despatched two officers to that quarter to see that there was no delay in the execution of this treaty.