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far distant until the eighteenth century to extend thisoutlying Cossack fringe or to do much more than spyout the land with, at frequent intervals, exchange ofembassies with the Christian Georgian principalities,lying beyond the immense massif of the central Caucasusbetween the hammer of the Turk and the anvil of thePersian.The Russia of Peter the Great moved forward againstthe derelict Persia of the last Safavids. Peter, whosereckless energy was unspent even by the Great NorthernWar, had pushed out expeditions towards Central Asia inquest of Eastern marts and Indian trade routes (1714-17),and he himself in person led a campaign against Persia(1722-23) by the age-old route along the narrow coastalstrip between the Caucasus and the Caspian. He losta fleet and there were the usual appalling losses fromsickness, but he imposed his will upon the totteringshah, who ceded Baku and all his western and southernCaspian sea-coast in return for help against his hereditaryfoe, the Turks.The Russian forward bound was too great. Communicationsand climate were fatally weakening. Thetwo ancient Christian peoples of Transcaucasia, theGeorgians and Armenians, were in constant touch withthe Russians, but they were far too divided amongthemselves and too beset by the Turks to be of any directassistance. The Armenian merchants were closely boundup with Persian trade, and Georgians, usually as convertsto Islam, had played a notable part in Persian administrationfor a hundred years past. Far away at the other endof Russia Peter's immediate successors were otherwiseengrossed and in any case were of a very different kidneyto the new ruler who had appeared in Persia, Nadir Shah(d. 1747), the last of the great Persian conquerors. In1732 and 1735 all Peter's Caspian gains were retrocededto Persia. The Russian frontier was once again theTerek.Russian aims in one respect, however, had beenattained. A contemporaneous Turkish bid for theeastern Caucasus and the Caspian had been frustrated.Tiflis and the eastern Georgian lands together with291