'Report on the Persian Army' [‎46r] (91/170)

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waw that Colonel von Schonovski was only a nominal chief of
the mission. Each oilicer of the mission had a separate
contract with the Persian Government, and it was stipulated in
the contracts that every officer was to be under the direct
orders of the Persian Minister of War. The officers, being
considered in the active service of Austria and retaining their
ranks and promotion, naturally should have been entirely under
the orders ot the Colonel, and the rights due to seniority and
rank should not have been put aside in Persia. The faulty
arrangement led to subalterns aspiring to rights of equality
with their superiors, and to much friction between the officers
and their hierarchical chief, and caused much detriment to the
service. Differences also arose between the Colonel and the
Austrian. Envoy at Teheran, and the Colonel was recalled in
October, 1879.
It is a curious tact that differences between the chiefs of
military missions and the diplomatic representatives of their
countries should so frequently have arisen. The first two
chiefs of the Russian mission also did not agree with their
Legation. The writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. of the article in the “Internationale
Revue’ (Year V, 917 et seq.), who is my authority for all the
details concerning the Austrian officers and their work in
Pe rsia, ascribes these unfortunate occurrences as having been
mostly due to a sort of agreement between the members of
the Corps Diplomatique by which they have created for them
selves in Teheran society an exceptional position as regards
rank and precedence, which a staff officer in active service
cannot accept.
Colonel von Schonowski, who had been a persona grata with
the Shah and the high Persian officials, was replaced by
Colonel Scheme], who understood neither how to keep on good
terms with the authorities nor how to gain the esteem and
sympathies of his subordinates. The fine edifice which the
mission had erected gradually fell to pieces, and although 1,200
men and a battery of six Uchatius guns of the new corps did
good service in Azerbaijan, whither they had been sent with
other troops to quell the Kurdish revolt of 1880-81, the
Austrian officers were not retained after the end of their
contracts, and all, with the exception of the bandmaster, left
Persia at the end of 1881. Soon after this the “Austrian
corps*’ broke up, its men being drafted into other battalions,
and many of its officers figuring for years in the Army List
without being in service.
After the departure of the Austrian mission in 1881, the
Persian Government engaged, through its representative in
Vienna, some commissioned and non-commissioned officers of
the Austrian reserve or not in service on a one year’s contract,
and at salaries which were much inferior to those which had
been paid to the members of previous missions. There were
four officers, one captain and lieutenant of infantry (Geissler
and Wedell), one captain of cavalry (Smolak), and one captain
of artillery (von Prueschenck), and five corporals (three infantry,