the arsenal several times each day in order to encourage and stimulate the workmen. Fetteh Ali Shah had expired on the 23rd of October at Ispahan. News of the event was officially communicated to the British representative at Tabreez on the 7th of November, and on the 10th of that month, by means of unremitted exertion, Sir Henry Lindsay Bethune was enabled to march from Tabreez on Meeaneh in command of the troops, upon whose aid the Shah relied for overcoming the formidable competitors for sovereign power. On the 16th of November, 1834, the Shah and his court left Tabreez, without having previously made any arrangement for the despatch to Tehran of either men or stores. The Kaim-Makam knew that these matters were being looked to by the English representative, and he had not sufficient respect either for himself, or for the government of his master, to feel at all troubled by the incongruity of throwing upon a foreign minister the burden of providing for the successful progress of the king. On the 24th of November, the Persian troops under the command of the English officers who had been lent to the Shah, arrived at the place of rendezvous.
Colonel Bethune was now at the head of a considerable force which possessed twenty-four guns, and when he had taken up a position at Zenjan, half-way between Tabreez and Tehran, he was made aware of the approach of some of the adherents of the Zil-es-Sultan. But the Shadow of the Sultan was already fast declining. His followers no sooner were informed of the strength of the king's army, and of the fact that his Majesty was accompanied by the representatives of Russia and of England, than they hastened, one after another, to secure their
