War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and ... - Oguzlar.az

58 Stephanie CroninEuropean alignments. Although Iran was powerless over the wider contextwhich determined the level and duration of European interest, nonethelessthe initiative for both the French and the British missions had clearly comefrom the shah and Abbas Mirza, for whom foreign assistance with militaryreform was one of the major benefits of Iran’s international alliances. Themissions were not forced on a reluctant or conservative Iran by a forwardlookingEurope. On the contrary, it was the shah who insisted on the militarymissions in the face of a European consensus that, in Iran’s existingcircumstances, such reforms were unlikely to be beneficial, even the officersof the military missions themselves expressing skepticism regarding theextent to which Iran was really benefiting from these experiments with Europeanmodels and the employment of European officers.To European observers, Iran’s military strength had always resided in itsirregular cavalry, furnished by the tribal khans, which had proved itself soeffective in lightning raids and defensive skirmishing, while the new nezamtroops inspired little confidence. The remarks of a Russian staff officer, CaptainN. N. Muraviev, are typical. In 1817 he declared:This unfortunate infantry, of which they speak in Europe with respect,was invented to our own benefit. After losing their Asian agility and quickness,the sarbaz have not however acquired European characteristics andare a base and dirty force, badly dressed and created as victims for ourgrenadiers. They cannot even handle the English muskets which they havebeen given. 29Echoes of Muraviev’s conclusions were to be heard throughout the century.Henry Rawlinson, for example, a member of the 1833 British military missionand later British minister at Tehran, was candid about British motives,writing in 1875 that Britain had assisted Abbas Mirza to build “a so-calledregular army” solely in order to prise Iran away from the French alliance.He frankly admitted that the nezam forces of Iran had been “from the epochof their first creation contemptible”, and that all they ever had in commonwith the regular armies of Europe was drill and exercise, while their expensewas rapidly impoverishing the country. Rawlinson acutely concluded thatalthough Iran’s defensive military capacity had been progressively weakenedby the introduction of European-style regiments, the shah’s power had beensignificantly augmented. 30During the 1820s, after the departure of the British, no new officialmilitary missions arrived in Iran, but Abbas Mirza continued to engageEuropean officers on an individual basis. The end of the Napoleonic warshad left many ex-officers in Europe without employment or career prospects,and many travelled far afield in search of positions. A number of such officers,of various nationalities, French, Italian and Spanish, eventually arrived inIran and found employment both with Abbas Mirza and with MohammadAli Mirza, the Prince-Governor of Kemanshah. Although these foreign officers