The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia

by Voltaire

The situation of Russia is such, as necessarily obliges her to keep up certain connexions with all the nations that lie in the fifth degree of north latitude. When under a bad administration, she was a prey by turns to the Tartars, the Swedes, and the Poles; but when governed by a resolute and vigorous prince, she became formidable to all her neighbours. Peter began his reign by an advantageous treaty with the Chinese. He had waged war at one and the same time against the Swedes and the Turks, and now prepared to lead his victorious armies into Persia.

At this time Persia began to fall into that deplorable state, in which we now behold her. Let us figure to ourselves the thirty years' war in Germany, the times of the league, those of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the reigns of Charles VI. and of king John in France, the civil wars in England, the long and horrible ravages of the whole Russian empire by the Tartars, or their invasion of China; and then we shall have some slight conception of the miseries under which the Persian empire has so long groaned.

A weak and indolent prince, and a powerful and enterprising subject, are sufficient to plunge a whole nation into such an abyss of disasters. Hussein, sha, shaic, or sophi of Persia, a descendant of the great sha Abbas, who sat at this time on the throne of Persia, had given himself wholly up to luxury and effeminacy: his prime minister committed acts of the greatest violence and injustice, which this great prince winked at, and this gave rise to forty years' desolation and bloodshed.

Persia, like Turkey, has several provinces, all governed in a different manner; she has subjects immediately under her dominion, vassals, tributary princes, and even nations, to whom the court was wont to pay a tribute, under the name of subsidies; for instance, the people of Daghestan, who inhabit the branches of mount Caucasus, to the westward of the Caspian Sea, which was formerly a part of the ancient Albania; for all nations have changed their appellation and their limits. These are now called Lesgians, and are mountaineers, who are rather under the protection, than the dominion, of Persia; to these the government paid subsidies for defending the frontiers.

At the other extremity of the empire, towards the Indies, was the prince of Candahar, who commanded a kind of martial militia, called Aghwans. This prince of Candahar was a vassal of the Persian, as the hospodars of Walachia and Moldavia are of the Turkish empire: this vassalage was not hereditary, but exactly the same with the ancient feudal tenures established throughout Europe, by that race of Tartars who overthrew the Roman empire. The Aghwan militia, of which the prince of Candahar was the head, was the same with the Albanians on the coasts of the Caspian Sea, in the neighbourhood of Daghestan, and a mixture of Circassians and Georgians, like the ancient Mamelucks who enslaved Egypt. The name of Aghwans is a corruption; Timur, whom we call Tamerlane, had led these people into India, and they remained settled in the province of Candahar, which sometimes belonged to the Mogul empire, and sometimes to that of Persia. It was these Aghwans and Lesgians who began the revolution.

Mir-Weis, or Meriwitz, intendant of the province, whose office was only to collect the tributes, assassinated the prince of Candahar, armed the militia, and continued master of the province till his death, which happened in 1717. His brother came quietly to the succession, by paying a slight tribute to the Persian court. But the son of Mir-Weis, who inherited the ambition of his father, assassinated his uncle, and began to erect himself into a conqueror. This young man was called Mir-Mahmoud, but he was known in Europe only by the name of his father, who had begun the rebellion. Mahmoud reinforced his Aghwans, by adding to them all the Guebres he could get together. These Guebres were an ancient race of Persians, who had been dispersed by the caliph Omar, and who still continued attached to the religion of the Magi (formerly flourished in the reign of Cyrus), and were always secret enemies to the new Persians. Having assembled his forces, Mahmoud marched into the heart of Persia, at the head of a hundred thousand men.

At the same time the Lesgians or Albanians, who, on account of the troublesome times, had not received their subsidies from the court of Persia, came down from their mountains with an armed force, so that the flames of civil war were lighted up at both ends of the empire, and extended themselves even to the capital.

These Lesgians ravaged all that country which stretches along the western borders of the Caspian Sea, as far as Derbent, or the Iron Gate. In this country is situated the city of Shamache, about fifteen leagues distant from the sea, and is said to have been the ancient residence of Cyrus, and by the Greeks called Cyropolis, for we know nothing of the situation or names of these countries, but what we have from the Greeks; but as the Persians never had a prince called Cyrus, much less had they any city called Cyropolis. It is much in the same manner that the Jews, who commenced authors when they were settled in Alexandria, framed a notion of a city called Scythopolis, which, said they, was built by the Scythians in the neighbourhood of Judea, as if either Scythians or ancient Jews could have given Greek names to their towns.

The city of Shamache was very rich. The Armenians, who inhabit in the neighbourhood of this part of the Persian empire, carried on an immense traffic there, and Peter had lately established a company of Russian merchants at his own expense, which company became very flourishing. The Lesgians made themselves masters of this city by surprise, plundered it, and put to death all the Russians who traded there under the protection of shah Hussein, after having stripped all their warehouses. The loss on this occasion was said to amount to four millions of rubles.