Sykes' History of Persia Vol 2 (pdf) - Heritage Institute

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402 HISTORY! OF PERSIA CHAP.
an arrangement with a
_
regicide nation, and at the first
audience he merely asked the French representative
"
How are " " "
you How ? is
Buonaparte ? and " What
"
made you kill your king ? Meanwhile the lack of
rapid communications between Calcutta and London and
the procrastination of the British Government had caused
a long delay.
The British Cabinet had debated on the
question of giving assistance to Persia for two years without
coming to any decision, and the Governor-General had
referred the matter to London.
The Treaty of Finkenstein, 1807. Disappointed in the
jsr quarter whence he had hoped for support, and with no
British Minister at Teheran to maintain British influence,
the Shah, realizing the seriousness of the Russian menace,
responded to the overtures of the French Emperor, and
followed up his letter by the despatch of Mirza Riza as an
envoy to the French Court, which he reached at Tilsit.
In his instructions it was laid down that, although the
Shah regarded Russia as an ordinary enemy, yet she was
"
equally an enemy of the kings of Persia and of France,
and her destruction accordingly became the duty of the
two kings. France would attack her from that quarter ;
Persia from this." A further instruction shows how
completely the Shah had turned his back on the procrastinating
British, for it was declared that " If the French have
an intention of invading Khorasan, the king will appoint
an army to go down by the road of Kabul and Kandahar."
1 In other words, the Shah asserted his readiness to invade
India. At the same time Mirza Riza was forbidden to
cede a port
for the use of the French " for their passage
to Hindustan." A preliminary treaty,
known as the treaty
of Finkenstein, which embodied the conditions just
mentioned, was signed
in
May 1807 and sent to Teheran.
The Gardanne Mission, 1807-1808. A few months
later an important military mission, composed of General
Gardanne and seventy commissioned and non-commisj^
sioned I officers, appeared in Persia and set to work to
~ train the Persian army on European
lines. The French
general was undoubtedly instructed to organize the army
of the Shah with a view to its
employment as an auxiliary