PERSIAN CAMP NEAR IT. 
581 
native chiefs interposed, and the plans of the brothers were soon 
rendered abortive. In after-times, neither the genius nor ex¬ 
perience of Nadir Shah produced any digested military regula¬ 
tions. He did not require them. His enemies, for the most 
part, were undisciplined like his own troops. Courage and 
strength of arm, were all he wanted ; and, a public robber at the 
head of his wild and rapacious tribes, he broke into kingdoms, 
plundering, depopulating, and leaving a desert, rather than an 
empire behind him. The same style of warfare, whether for 
defence or aggression, continued through all the successive 
reigns, from Kerim Khan to the present monarch; till the genius 
of one man, having laid almost all Europe at his feet, cast his 
eye towards Asia, and hoping to grasp it also, attempted a first 
step towards it by making a friend of Persia, and then changing 
the nature of her military character. That done, Persia would 
then become a power ; a meet ally for the great French empire ; 
a strong garrison between the great rival empire on the north, 
and the vast eastern objects of Napoleon’s ambition. But while 
her armies remained nothing more than a bold undisciplined 
congregation from her numerous tribes, however decisive they 
might prove opposed to people like themselves, still, when 
brought against any European army, organized as well as brave, 
they could not be deemed better than a mere rabble, and must 
gradually give ground and fall before it. To prevent the possi¬ 
bility of such an impediment stepping in the way of his pro¬ 
jected oriental empire, Napoleon determined to be before-hand, 
and virtually take post himself in “ the Great Kingdom.” 
His first embassy thither took place in the year 1806. The 
advantages of European military organization were then incident¬ 
ally represented to the Shah ; and, soon after, assisted by a few 
