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While the Amir-i-Nizam was at Tabriz, his energetic management left nothing for the Prince to do, and as, moreover, a policy of caution debarred him from taking a very active part in public affairs, he occupied himself chiefly with the simple amusements of a country gentleman.
Stevens, British Consul at Tabriz, and Colonel Shiel the Ambassador, the Persian government promulgated an edict of toleration, granting equal protection to all its Christian subjects, including the right of proselyting, following in this the example of Turkey.
The hardships resulting from such treatment, with other causes, had now brought Mrs. Perkins into a very critical state of health. As a last resort, Mr. Perkins addressed a letter to Sir John Campbell, British ambassador at Tabriz, describing their situation, and enclosing his letters of introduction to that gentleman.
I vividly recall the meteoric rise of the Faith of the Báb in the provinces of Persia and the stirring episodes associated with His cruel incarceration in the mountain-fastnesses of Ádhirbayján, with the revelation of the laws of His Dispensation, with the proclamation of the independence of His Faith, with the peerless heroism of His disciples, with the fiendish cruelty of His foes—the chief magistrate, the civil authorities, the ecclesiastical dignitaries and the masses of the people of His native land—with the humiliation, the spoliation, the dispersal, the eventual massacre of a vast number of His followers, and, above all, with His own execution in the city of Tabríz.
On New Year's day, which was the 10th of Muharram, a day of great mourning which is held sacred in the Persian religious calendar, the Russian military governor, who had hoisted Russian flags over the government buildings at Tabriz, hung the Sikutu'l-Islam, who was the chief priest of Tabriz, two other priests, and five others, among them several high officials of the Provincial Government.
Being closely pursued by a party of Persian cavalry, he abandoned all his baggage, and with great difficulty reached Tabriz, where he was constrained to take sanctuary in the house of the chief Moulla. He died there after enduring existence for about six months under circumstances and with surroundings which must have been supremely hateful to him.
Called by appointment on Lady Macdonald, who came here to speak to me about Sir J. Macdonald's salary and position at Tabriz. She says that after the letter he wrote, representing the inexpediency of Sir H. Willock's remaining as his first assistant and the non-existence of any necessity for two assistants, if the Bengal Government do not recall Willock Sir J. Macdonald cannot remain.
The regiment which, scorning the miracle that warned Sám Khán and his men to dissociate themselves from any further attempt to destroy the life of the Báb, volunteered to take their place and riddled His body with its bullets, lost, in that same year, no less than two hundred and fifty of its officers and men, in a terrible earthquake between Ardibíl and Tabríz; two years later the remaining five hundred were mercilessly shot in Tabríz for mutiny, and the people, gazing on their exposed and mutilated bodies, recalled their savage act, and indulged in such expressions of condemnation and wonder as to induce the leading mujtahids to chastise and silence them.
By this foul deed the Barrack Square of Tabríz became a second Calvary. The enemies of the Báb enjoyed a guilty thrill of triumph, thinking that this hated tree of the Bábí faith was now severed at the root, and its complete eradication would be easy! But their triumph was short-lived! They did not realize that the Tree of Truth cannot be felled by any material ax.
For that same reason, doubtless, she has recently massacred some hundreds of Persians in Tabriz, Enzeli, and Resht, and has hanged numbers of Islamic priests, provincial officials, and constitutionalists whom she classifies as the "dregs of revolution."
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