30 
RESIDENCE OF THE MISSION AT BUSHIRE, 
correspondence, contained naturally full accounts of the progress of the 
campaign with the Russians, (the most important object in the existing 
politics of Persia), and the general sensations which it had excited at 
Teheran. These details retain of course little interest; it is enough to 
add, rather as a sketch of national character, that the King, in conse¬ 
quence of his reverses, had distributed alms to the poor, had ordered 
prayers to be said in the mosques, and the denunciations of vengeance 
on all unbelievers to be read from the Koran. The military preparations 
also were hastened at Shiraz (in some measure for a different object); 
and the Russian prisoners there were ordered to drill the Persian troops, 
who had been raised and equipped after a Russian manner. The ac¬ 
count of this new corps was continued in other letters (which, on the 
23d, we received in two days and a half from Shiraz). The Prince 
was instructed to form a body of able young men, to shave them if 
they had already beards, and to dress them in the Russian uniform. 
There was at this time at Shiraz, another body also of seven hundred 
hardy and active men, (of the Boloitk or Perganah of Noor in Mazan - 
cleran), who were in the same manner to be subjected to the discipline 
of the Russian drill, to lose their beards, to substitute the firelock for 
the matchlock gun, (which they had been accustomed to use), and to 
assume the whole dress of the Russian soldiery. Mahomed Zeky 
Khan and Sheik Root a Khan were appointed their commanders. 
The Jezaerchi also, the men who use blunderbusses, were to wear the 
new Russian dress. The French at this time were very anxious to pro¬ 
ceed to Shiraz, to drill the new-raised corps; but as the King prevented 
them in a former instance from sending a Resident to Bushire lest they 
should have found that the English factory was still in Persia, he now 
equally prevented their advancing to Shiraz, lest the English in their 
turn should discover the arrival of their competitors. New gun-car¬ 
riages after the Russian form were ordered (though those before made 
after the same pattern broke to pieces at the first fire), and five thousand 
new firelocks ; but as the Prince found great difficulty in procuring the 
execution of a former order of two thousand only, he had in this in¬ 
stance sent into Lariat an for three thousand matchlock guns, and into 
