Napoleon and the Shah — The Alliance of 1807, and the Mission Britain Sent to Break It (PDF)

In the spring of 1807 the Emperor of the French wrote to the Shah of Persia that there was

only one enemy left in the world, and that it was England. He meant it, for about six months.

This is the story of the Franco-Persian alliance of 1807, and of the British mission that

raced to undo it — told as far as possible in the words of the people who were there.

It begins with an Armenian merchant arriving in Tehran with letters from Napoleon that no one

at the Persian court could read. It goes on to a French officer shut for eight months in a

dry cistern in Turkey; a treaty signed in a castle Napoleon liked because it had chimneys in

every room; and the private instructions that reveal what the alliance was really for — to

chart a road to India for forty thousand men, and to intercept England's mail.

Then Napoleon made peace with Russia at Tilsit, and the treaty said nothing about Georgia.

Persia had already gone to war with Britain on a French promise. In Tehran an Englishman,

James Morier, was shown the French treaty in its black velvet cover, copied its fourteen

articles where he sat, and left the best eyewitness account of the Persian court in the

language. Two years later Napoleon's last word on Persia was to send the Shah's ambassador

away, and to say that if the Shah wanted to write again he must first drive out the English.

Inside

- fifteen documents, each with a dated heading and a line of context placing it;

- Napoleon's letters to Fath Ali Shah in full, in the English of the 1884 selection;

- his diary entries at Finkenstein, in the 1910 translation;

- Morier's eyewitness scenes — the treaty in its velvet cover, and the ambassador trying to

 explain a zebra to a court that cannot believe anyone would light a street at night;

- a 1,300-word historical narrative, a preface, and a chronology of the whole affair;

- an index of persons, a note on the sources, and four plates;

- a route map of the road to India Napoleon drew across Persia, and the turn he took at Tilsit.

The text

All four sources were published before 1929 and all four authors died before 1930, so the

whole book is public domain in the United States and in the United Kingdom and European

Union. Spelling is the sources' own — *Fetteh Ali*, *Buonaparte*, *Teheran*. Napoleon's

letters are given in Denis Bingham's existing English translation; no new translation has

been made. The preface, the story, the titles and the context lines are original to this

edition.

You receive

- a 44-page designed PDF at 5 × 8 inches, for screen reading or printing at home;

- DRM-free, yours to keep and move between devices.

Newly set and edited by Vishal T · @whatiamreadingtoday7