that ill-fated prince, and the constancy with which he had supported every reverse of fortune, might have been expected to inspire some gleam of pity in the breast of a soldier who had himself known adversity. But no trait of mercy was to be discovered in the conduct of the triumphant Kajar. The eyes of his wounded foe were torn from his head,[1] and the further treatment to which he was subjected was such as could only have been conceived in the mind of a brutal barbarian.[2] Aga Mahomed could not at first resolve to renounce the pleasure of knowing that his rival still lived in misery; Lutf'ali was, therefore, sent to Tehran, where, after a time, he suffered, by the bowstring, that death which he had so often braved in battle.
To commemorate the final downfall of the Zend dynasty, Aga Mahomed Khan is said to have decided on forming a pyramid of skulls on the spot where Lutf'ali Khan had been taken; and for that purpose, (according to the authorities I follow,) he decapitated six hundred prisoners, and despatched their heads to Bem, by the hands of three hundred other prisoners; forcing each man to carry the skulls of two of his former comrades. On arriving at Bem, the three hundred survivors met the fate of the other six hundred. The pyramid said to have been thus composed still existed in the year 1810; affording to an English traveller[3]: a horrid evidence of
- ↑ "It is stated that Aga Mahomed himself put out the eyes of his rival."—Pottinger’s Travels.
- ↑ "An old man whom I met at Sheerauz, who had served under Lootf Alee Khan in his youth, informed me of this. He had been an eye-witness of the dreadful treatment to which his unhappy master was subjected."—Binning: Two Years’ Travel in Persia.
- ↑ The late Sir Henry Pottinger.—(With reference to this horrid monument, which was seen by Sir H. Pottinger, I have followed the generally
