hrates; but honor required that, before any other expedition was
undertaken, Nadir should revenge the blood of his brother, Ibrahim Khan,
who had been slain in an attack of the Lesghis.

When the army was on its march to Daghestan an event occurred which cast
a dark cloud over all the fair prospects that dawned upon Persia, and
exhibited in the strongest view the miserable condition of those empires
whose fate hangs upon the disposition and talents of a despotic
sovereign. An advanced corps, chiefly composed of Afghans, had, by their
extraordinary valor, gained the greatest advantages over the Lesghis;
and Nadir was hastening by the way of Mazandaran to their support, when,
pursuing his march through one of the forests in that country, a ball
from an assassin, who had concealed himself behind a tree, wounded him
in the hand and killed his horse. The Prince, Reza Kuli, who was near
him, galloped toward the spot from which the shot had been fired; but
neither his efforts nor those of his guards that aided him could succeed
in the attempts to seize the fugitive, who, favored by the thickness of
the wood, effected his escape. He was afterward taken; and the historian
of Nadir asserts that he was the agent of a chief of a barbarous tribe
who cherished a secret resentment against the conqueror.

This accident, though it made a deep and indelible impression upon the
mind of Nadir, did not prevent his proceeding to attack the Lesghis; but
he never engaged in an enterprise of more hazard. These mountaineers
defended themselves with the most desperate bravery; and the rugged
nature of the whole country of Daghestan, which they inhabit, made it
almost impossible to subdue them. The bravest troops of the Persian army
were worn out with the fatigue of this harassing war; and the
preparations which the Russians began to make at Astrakhan, though
dictated by a fear that Nadir meant to invade their country after he had
subdued the Lesghis, gave the latter every encouragement to persevere in
their resistance; and the Persian monarch was compelled to retire from
this expedition with very partial success and very great loss.

Nadir had, from the day on which his life was attempted, entertained
suspicions of his eldest son, Reza Kuli. He summoned him to his
presence. The Prince instantly obeyed, and was on his arrival made
prisoner and deprived of sight. A respectable European writer, who went
to Persia two years after this event, asserts