PERSIAN COWARDICE. 
215 
fighting, where every man, independent of the other, first took care of 
his own safety before he thought of killing his enemy, they did not 
relish our system. A Persian talking to one of our officers upon that 
subject, said very ingenuously, “ If there was no dying in the case, how 
gloriously the Persians would fight!” Their ideas of courage are indeed 
totally different from ours. They look upon courage as a quality which 
a man may have or have not, as he may feel at the moment. One of 
the King’s generals, who has the reputation of being a courageous man, 
was not ashamed to own that he and a large body of troops had been 
kept at bay by two Russian soldiers, who alternately fired their muskets 
at them, and at length obliged them to move away. In talking of the 
Russians, they say that they are so divested of feeling, that rather than 
retire, they die on the spot. 
Abbas Mirza himself is said to be personally brave, and that in 
his different encounters with the Russians he has risked himself further 
than necessity required. He punishes cowardice, an instance of which 
we witnessed. One of his Generals, Mahomed Reg, had on some 
emergency quitted his post, and run away. The Prince degraded him 
from his rank, tied his hands behind his back, put a wooden sword by 
his side, seated him on an ass, with his face towards the tail, and thus 
paraded him through Tabriz. 
After the first visits of ceremony were over, the Ambassador scarcely 
passed a day for a month after, without spending several hours in the 
company of the Prince, when formality and etiquette were laid aside, 
and when His Royal Highness entered into all the details of his govern¬ 
ment without the smallest reserve. Although sincerity be not the virtue 
of his country, and although we were warned not to forget that he also 
was a Persian, yet such appearance of candour was there in his manner, 
accompanied by such engaging affability, that we all permitted our¬ 
selves to believe that he was as superior in mind to the rest of his 
countrymen, as he certainly was in his exterior qualities. Seldom have 
I met, in any country, a man so fascinating as Abbas Mirza. His 
countenance is always animated, his smile is agreeable, and his conver- 
