France, that the peace talks between the Iranian and the Russian am-
bassadors be held in Paris, with Napoleon's mediation. As a result,
the shah, 'Abbas, and their favored officials were encouraged to maxi-
mize their demands on Russia while relying on Gardane and France
to deliver complete victory. There was never an opportunity to test
whether the Iranians might have been willing to yield on some points
in the process of serious negotiations because they confronted only
nonnegotiable demands.^13
Russia's position was as intransigent as Iran's but even less tenable
because it was so remarkably ill-conceived. St. Petersburg's brief initial
willingness to allow some leeway on the status of Yerevan and Nakh-
javan was quickly replaced by a renewed claim to the two khanates,
even though they were still under Iranian control. From Gudovich's
first letter to the Iranian government to the collapse of the negotia-
tions, Russia demanded that Iran waive any claims to all the territory
north of the Aras and the Kura on the grounds that the claims were
tenuous and the area of little value. (Alexander, in his discussions with
Ambassador Caulaincourt, carried the matter further by claiming that
Russia already controlled the territory in question, including Yerevan
and Nakhjavan. Caulaincourt and his superiors in Paris took the tsar at
his word.) The Iranian government replied—with more aplomb than it
was usually given credit for by Europeans—that, if the area was worth
so little, there was no good reason for Russia to want it and further-
more that, if large rivers were necessary for secure borders, Russia
should stick to its established river boundary in the northern Caucasus.
(Gudovich misinterpreted this last remark as an Iranian claim to all
the land up to the northern Caucasus.) If the French were not to be
trusted, as the Russians argued, then surely the greater danger would
be to Russia (which had until recently been France's enemy) than to
Iran (which had had only peaceful relations with France). The Rus-
sians tried lying in ways they could easily be caught, like telling the
Iranian government that Napoleon could not help because he was dy-
ing of some illness at a time when he was writing the shah of his vic-
tories in eastern Europe. Gudovich was under the illusion that Iran
was in dire straits, that the shah could never make an alliance with
France because he feared a French invasion, and that he and Hosein
Qoli Khan of Yerevan were willing to give up that khanate and Nakhja-
van because of the excessive defense costs. The commander-in-chief
believed that there was a rebellion in Khorasan in 1808, which was
not the case. He also mistook John Malcolm's unsuccessful attempt to
persuade the shah to revert to a British alliance for a successful inva-
sion of the province of Fars. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
France and Britain in Iran 131