'Report on the Persian Army' [‎23r] (45/170)

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that in a country so backward as Persia, and possessing
governing institutions and a national character so foreign to
the civilised idea, it was to an irregular army alone that the
safety ol the kingdom must be confided. In the twenty-first
chapter of his “ Hisiory of Persia” he says : —
An army cannot be maintained in a state of discipline and efficiency
for any length of time unless its pay be regular and its equipment complete,
and this can never be the case except in a state where the succession to the
throne is settled, where the great majority of the population are of peaceable
habits, and where the establishments are permanent and the laws respected
and administered upon principles well understood, and not liable to be altered
at the will of the sovereign and of his delegates. That a regular army, by
the influence of its example and habits of order, may be instrumental in
promoting civilisation, there can be no doubt, but this change must coincide
with many other reforms, or every effort to render it effectual to the great
end of national defence will prove abortive, and terminate in disappoint
ment.”
The highest authority, however, that can be quoted is that
of Sir Henry Rawlinson, who was himself an officer in the
Persian army, and enjoyed unrivalled opportunities of forming
a judgment upon the matter. These are his words :—
“ It can be proved that whatever benefit Persia may have derived, as far
as regards the centralisation of the power of her monarch, from the intro
duction into her armies of European discipline, she has been as a substantive
power progressively weakened by the change, and rendered less capable of
sustaining pressure from without. . . . To a nation devoid of organisation
in every other department of government a regular army was impossible.
It thus happened that, notwithstanding the admirable material for s ddicrv
which was offered by the hardy peasantry of Azerbaijan, and the still harder
mountaineers of Kermanshah, notwithstanding the aptitude of the officers to
receive insti action, notwithstanding that the due portion of physical courage
appertained generally to the men, the disciplined forces of Persia were from
the epoch of their first creation contemptible. Beyond drill and exercise
they never had anything in common with the regular armies of Europe and
India. System was entirely wanted, whether in regard to pay, clothing, food,
carriage, equipage, commissariat, promotion, or command. At the same
time a false confidence arose of a most exaggerated and dangerous character ;
the resources of the country were lavished on the army to an extent which
grievously impoverished it ; above all, the tribes, the chivalry of the empire,
the forces with which Nadir overran the East, and which, ever yielding but
ever present, surrounded, under Agha Muhammad Khan, the Russian armies
with a desert, were destroyed. Truly, then, may it be said that, in presenting
Persia with the boon of a so-called regular army in order to reclaim her from
her unlawful loves with France, we have clothed her in the robe of Nessus.”
(“ England and Russia in the Eiist,” p. 30.)
In 1814 when the reverses of Napoleon appeared to have
completely closed a soldier’s prospects in Europe, many officers
sought and found in the troubled regions of the East an ample
field for the gratification of their passion, and a number of them,
having come to Persia, were engaged by the Crown Prince
Abbas M irza and by Muhammad AH Mirza, the Prince-
Governor of Kermanshah and Kurdistan, and drilled the
Persian troops after the disappearance of the greater part of
the English detachment in 1815. Of these officers, five
Frenchmen and four Italians entered the service of Abbas
Mirza, eight others (among them Devaux, Court, Oms) found