on all points and returned to Tbilisi to take command of Russia's
Caucasian provinces. In 1825, he grew impatient with the unsuccess-
ful attempts to define the border and sent troops to occupy the north
shore of Lake Gokcha (now called Lake Sevan), which had great str-
tegic value as a route of march into Yerevan. 'Abbas viewed this as
an act of aggression, but Ermolov would not yield. Both men looked
to war as the solution.^8
Iran's relations with Britain were only slightly better than its re-
lations with Russia. Even though the "great game" (the Anglo-Russian
rivalry over Iran, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Tibet, and India in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) had its roots in this
era, many important British policy makers did not share their succes-
sors' alarm over the growth of Russian influence in Iran. Some Brit-
ish officials in India and western Asia were concerned about this,
but they were unable to bring British policy into line with their views.
Even Lord Moira, who succeeded Lord Minto as governor-general in
1813, was far less concerned about Russian expansion toward India
than about the danger that Iran, having received military assistance
from Britain, would direct its army against the East India Company's
holdings. British diplomats in St. Petersburg considered Russia's in-
volvement in the Iranian marches to be of so little consequence to
British interests that they rarely mentioned it in their reports. When
they did report some development in that quarter, they did so in
terms which were neutral or even rather sympathetic to the Russian
endeavor.^9
Most important, the cabinet in London demonstrated its lack of
interest in using Iran as a buffer between Russia and India by consis-
tently limiting the scale of British involvement in Iranian affairs from
the end of the first war to the end of the second. The Foreign Office
was displeased with Ouseley for having committed Britain to give
Iran more aid than London thought necessary, especially with regard
to the subsidy. When he left Iran in 1814, no regular ambassador was
sent to replace him. There was instead an interim arrangement by
which his subordinate James Morier and Henry Ellis, who was sent
on a specific assignment from London, took charge of relations with
Iran. Their task was to renegotiate the definitive treaty in order to
reduce the scope of the subsidy obligations. While most of the pro-
visions remained the same, Morier and Ellis made several significant
changes. They added a new article (the third) that specified that the
mutual assistance pact was exclusively defensive, that is, that aid
would be given only in the event of a foreign invasion of Iran. There
followed a stipulation that was not strictly related to the rest of the
154 The Consequences of the Struggle