The advice of Pottinger, the gallant English
officer who assisted the defence, was seldom asked, and still more seldom
taken; and no one spoke more plainly of the conduct of both besieged and
besiegers than did Pottinger himself.' M'Neill effected nothing definite
during a long stay in the Persian camp before Herat, the counteracting
influence of the Russian envoy being too strong with the Shah; and the
British representative, weary of continual slights, at length quitted the
Persian camp completely foiled. After six days' bombardment, the Persians
and their Russian auxiliaries delivered an assault in force on June 23d,
1838. It failed, with heavy loss, and the dispirited Shah determined on
raising the siege. His resolution was quickened by the arrival of Colonel
Stoddart in his camp, with the information that a military force from
Bombay, supported by ships of war, had landed on the island of Karrack in
the Persian Gulf, and with the peremptory ultimatum to the Shah that he
must retire from Herat at once. Lord Palmerston, in ordering this
diversion in the Gulf, had thought himself justified by circumstances in
overriding the clear and precise terms of an article in a treaty to which
England had on several occasions engaged to adhere. As for the Shah, he
appears to have been relieved by the ultimatum. On the 9th September he
mounted his horse and rode away from Herat.
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