e reduction of the fortresses of
Furrah and Herat. An event occurred, during the siege of the latter
city, which marked the barbarous character of this war. Nadir had
obtained a victory over a large division of the Afghan force, and
resolved to celebrate it with a splendid feast. Among other guests were
several prisoners of high rank. During the festivities the heads of
three hundred Afghans, who had been slain in the action, were held up on
the tops of spears. "At this sight," says the flattering historian of
Nadir, "the chiefs of our enemies fixed their eyes upon the ground, and
never dared to raise them again, notwithstanding the extraordinary
kindness with which they were treated by their great and generous
conqueror!"

While Nadir was employed at the siege of Herat the Persian nobles at
Ispahan persuaded the weak Tamasp to place himself at the head of an
army and march against the Turks, who were again assembling on the
frontier. The reverses which the arms of that nation had sustained in
Persia had caused a revolution at Constantinople, where the janizaries
had first murdered the vizier, and afterward dethroned Achmet, and
placed his nephew, Mahmud, upon the throne. To this Prince Nadir had
sent an envoy, demanding that the Turks should evacuate the province of
Azerbaijan; and Shah Tamasp had sent another with what a Persian
historian indignantly terms "a sweet-scented letter of congratulation"
upon his elevation to the throne. Before the result of the mission sent
by Nadir could be known, Tamasp had marched to besiege Erivan, had
retreated from before that fortress, been defeated by a Turkish army,
and had lost in one month all that the genius and valor of his general
had gained during the preceding season. To render the effects of his
weakness complete, the alarmed monarch had agreed to a peace, by which
he abandoned the whole of the country beyond the Araxes to the Turks,
and ceded five districts of the province of Kirmanshahan to Achmet, the
reigning pacha of Bagdad, by whom this treaty was negotiated. The
disgrace of this engagement was aggravated by its containing no
stipulation for the release of the Persians who had been made prisoners
during the war.

The moment that Nadir received accounts of the peace it seems to have
occurred to his mind that it afforded an excellent pretext for the
consummation of those projects he had so long cherished: but, although
bold and impatient, he was compelled to proceed