Note 7 — Chapter XV · AT ERIVAN

Dubois de Montpéreux, Voyage autour du Caucase, Paris, 1839, vol. iii. pp. 346 seq. When Morier, secretary to the British Embassy to Persia, visited the sirdar or governor of Erivan in 1814, he was told by his host with great gravity that “if three or four of the kings of Fireng (Europe) were to unite to take this castle, they might just take the trouble of going back again, for their labours would be in vain” (Morier, Second Journey, London, 1818, p. 319). The sirdar’s view was not held by British officers, one of whom, in giving an account of his visit in 1837, says, “I had expected to find the castle almost impregnable from the honours which were heaped upon the Marshal Paskevich for its capture, and was quite surprised to find a mere Turkish fort, strong indeed by nature on one side, but on the other three defended merely by a mud wall, and commanded from all the adjoining hills” (Wilbraham, Travels in the Transcaucasian Provinces, etc., London, 1839). ↑