the most
of his force.

The Shah, on learning all, became jealous or suspicious, and ordered the
reduction of the troops to the moderate limits really required for
provincial purposes. As affairs then stood, the Zil, with his
well-appointed army, was master of the situation, but he was constrained
to submit. He singled out the Amin-es-Sultan (now the Sadr Azem) as his
enemy at Court, and regarded him as the strong adviser who influenced
the Shah. His relations with Tehran then became so strained that the
Shah summoned him to his presence to have his wishes clearly explained
to him. The meeting of father and son did not tend to smooth matters,
and the latter, allowing his temper to carry him to extreme lengths,
tendered his resignation of the various governments he held, asking only
to retain the governorship of Isfahan. His request was granted, and from
that time he made no secret of his enmity to the Prime Minister.

Two or three years later the Shah restored to him some of the provinces
which he had resigned in 1888, and this enabled, him to carry out more
successfully the task which he had set himself, viz., that of amassing
money, after his army was broken up. The warlike Bakhtiari tribe form
the most important part of the military strength under the nominal
command of the Zil-es-Sultan, but he alienated them entirely by his
cruel and treacherous murder of their popular chief, Hussein Kuli Khan,
in 1882, and the long imprisonment of his son, the equally popular
Isfendiar Khan. Now that he has promised allegiance to his brother,
Mozuffer-ed-Din Shah, we may regard the peace of the South as assured.

The Naib-es-Sultaneh, Kamran Mirza, as Minister of War,
Commander-in-Chief, and Governor of Tehran, who was in constant
attendance on his father, was also regarded by foolish partisans as a
likely successor to the throne, but he himself never entertained the
idea. His position as head of the army gives him no real power--in fact,
it rather takes from his influence as Governor of Tehran; for the
soldiers look upon him as a costly appendage, for whose pleasures and
palaces their pay is clipped.

There is really no standing army, in Persia as we understand such,
except the royal guard and the weak Persian Cossack brigade at Tehran.
The artillery and infantry which do all the garrison work are militia
regiments, embodied for two years at a time. The conditions are one
year's service to two years' leave, and that they serv