The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia by Peter Hopkirk Read Free Book Online Page B

therefore chose to ignore the Shah’s call for help against the Russians. As it happened, they were quite within their rights, for Malcolm’s treaty made no mention of Russia, only of France and Afghanistan. The Persians were deeply affronted though, seeing this as a betrayal in their hour of need by a people they believed to be their ally. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, their apparent abandonment of the Shah was very shortly to cost the British dear.
    Early in 1804, informed of what had happened by his agents, Napoleon approached the Shah, offering to help him drive back the Russians in return for the use of Persia as a land-bridge for a French invasion of India. At first the Shah demurred, for he had not given up hope of the British, who were nearer at hand, coming to his assistance, and he therefore played for time with Napoleon’s envoys. But when it became clear that no help would come from Calcutta or London, he signed a treaty with Napoleon, on May 4, 1807, in which he agreed to sever all political and commercial relations with Britain, declare war on her, and allow French troops the right of passage to India. At the same time he agreed to receive a large military and diplomatic mission, commanded by a general, which among other things would reorganise and train his army along modern European lines. Officially this was to enable him to win back territories which he had lost to the Russians, but there seemed little doubt to those responsible for the defence of India that Napoleon intended to include the reinvigorated Persian troops in his designs against them.
    It was a brilliant coup by Napoleon, but worse was to follow. In the summer of 1807, after subduing Austria and Prussia, he defeated the Russians at Friedland, forcing them to sue for peace and to join his so-called Continental System, the blockade aimed at bringing Britain to her knees. The peace talks took place at Tilsit, amid great secrecy, aboard a giant raft decked with flags moored in the middle of the River Niemen. This curious choice of venue was to ensure that the two emperors were not overheard, especially by the British, who were known to have spies everywhere. Despite this precaution, however, the British secret service, which had an annual vote of £170,000, devoted principally to bribery, appears to have smuggled its own man on board – a disaffected Russian nobleman who sat hidden beneath the barge, his legs dangling in the water, listening to every word.
    Whether or not this was true, London was quick to discover that the two men, having patched up their differences, were now proposing to join forces and divide the world between them. France was to have the West, and Russia the East, including India. But when Alexander demanded Constantinople, the meeting point of East and West, for himself, Napoleon had shaken his head. ‘Never!’ he said, ‘For that would make you Emperor of the world.’ Not long afterwards intelligence reached London that just as Alexander’s father had put a plan for the invasion of India to Napoleon, so the latter had proposed a similar but greatly improved scheme to his new Russian ally. The first step would be the seizure of Constantinople, which they would share. Then, after marching the length of a defeated Turkey and a friendly Persia, they would together attack India.
    Greatly alarmed by this news, and by the arrival of the powerful French mission at Teheran, the British acted swiftly – too swiftly in fact. Without consulting one another, both London and Calcutta dispatched trouble-shooters to Persia to try to prevail upon the Shah to eject the French – ‘the advance guard of a French army,’ Lord Minto, Wellesley’s successor as Governor-General, called them. The first to arrive was John Malcolm, hurriedly promoted to Brigadier-General to give him added weight in his dealings with the Shah. In May 1808, eight years after his previous visit, Malcolm arrived at Bushire in the Persian Gulf. There,