task of punishing the insurgent governors of those places. While in Khorassan the king received an ambassador, laden with presents, from Zeman Shah, who requested him, on the part of his master, to return to Tehran; this Fetteh Ali agreed to do, on the condition that the Princes Mahmoud and Ferooz should be received back in Aflghanistan in a manner suitable to their rank.
In the meantime various reasons induced the English authorities in India to despatch to the Court of Persia a mission of a more imposing character than that which had been entrusted to Mehdi Ali Khan. The success which had attended the negotiations of that envoy in his endeavours to prevail upon the Shah to attack the Affghans, had not been known at Calcutta when the Earl of Mornington selected Captain Malcolm for the purpose of proceeding to the Court of Tehran. No English diplomatist had until this time been employed in Persia since the reign of Charles the Second.[1] Captain Malcolm was charged to make some arrangement for relieving India from the annual alarm occasioned by the threatened invasion of Zeman Shah; to counteract any possible designs which the French nation might entertain with regard to Persia; and to endeavour to
- ↑ "L'envoyé de la compagnie Françoise ayant eu avis qu'un agent de la compagnie Angloise, qui était à Ispahan, devait aussi avoir audience, et qu'il avait de longue main ménagé secrėtement les ministres, pour la préséance sur lui... il représentait que le droit de la nation Françoise etait d'avoir la préséance sur toutes les nations chrétiennes,"—Chardin. Vol. iii. p. 168.
"L'agent Anglois disoit qu'ayant une lettre du roi d'Angleterre à rendre... une lettre de roi devait aller devant celle d'un corps de marchands."—Idem.
Mr. Kaye, who has overlooked this mission, will excuse me for correcting the statement in his Life of Sir John Malcolm that no English envoy had visited the Persian court since the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
