The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk - Chs. 3,4

Chapter 3: Rehearsal for the Great Game

• see Captain Charles Christie's Mission to Herat and Lieutenant Henry Pottinger's observations of Baluchistan and Kerman
• "Early in 1812, to the immense relief of London and Calcutta, the alarming partnership between Napoleon and Alexander had broken up. In June of that year Napoleon attacked, not India, but Russia, and to the astonishment of the world suffered the most catastrophic reverse in history. The threat to India had been lifted. Or so it seemed to a wildly rejoicing Britain." - 56

Chapter 4: The Russian Bogy

• March 30, 1814: "Alexander, convinced now that he had been ordained by the Almighty to rid the world of Napoleon, was not content simply to drive them back beyond his own frontiers. He pursued the French half-way across Europe to Paris, entering it in triumph" - 58
• "If one man could be said to be responsible for the creation of the Russian bogy, it was a much-decorated British general named Sir Robert Wilson....It was on his return [from Russia as the official British observer] to London that Wilson drew official wrath upon himself by launching a one-man campaign against the Russians." - 59
• 1817: Wilson publishes A Sketch of the Military and Political Power of Russia; "In it he claimed that the Russians, emboldened by their sudden rise to power, were planning to carry out Peter the Great's supposed death-bed command that they conquer the world." - 60
• "Although Wilson had no lack of supporters among the intelligentsia and the liberals, who abhorred Alexander's authoritarian rule, and from newspapers and journals of like view, he was largely shouted down. Nonetheless his book, much of which was based on false assumptions, gave birth to a debate on Russia's every move which would continue for a hundred years or more....The first seeds of Russophobia had been sown." - 61
• 1813: Treaty of Gulistan, "the Shah was obliged to surrender almost all his claims to Georgia and Baku, as well as renouncing all naval rights on the Caspian Sea....All that the Shah got in return, apart from an end to hostilities, was an undertaking from the Tsar that he would support the claim of Abbas Mirza, his son and heir apparent....the Shah had no intention of honouring this treaty which had been forced upon him by his aggressive neighbours" - 66

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk - Ch.2

Chapter 2: Napoleonic Nightmare

• "There were two schools of thought. One argued that he would advance overland through Syria or Turkey, and attack India from Afghanistan or Baluchistan, while the other was convinced that he would come by sea, setting sail from somewhere on Egypt's Red Sea coast." - 24-5
• the East India Company "had found itself drawn reluctantly and expensively into the vacuum created by the disintegration of Mogul rule in India, and therefore increasingly involved in government and administration." - 25
• August 1, 1798: Admiral Horatio Nelson finds the French Armada of 40,000 soldiers east of Alexandria, Egypt, traps the fleet, and destroys all but two ships (26)
• January 24, 1801: after failing to convince Napoleon to join him, Tsar Paul I orders the Don Cossacks to attempt an overland invasion of India, through mainly unknown terrain; Paul told the Cossack leader, "You are to offer peace to all who are against the British....All the wealth of the Indies shall be your reward." - 28
• March 23, 1801: Tsar Paul I is assassinated and his son Alexander soon sends a messenger to stop the Don Cossacks - 29-30
• September 1801: Tsar Alexander annexes the independent kingdom of Georgia; "although Persian feelings ran high, actual hostilities did not break out between the two powers until June 1804, when the Russians thrust even further south, laying siege to Erivan, the capital of Armenia, a Christian possession of the Shah's." - 32
• "Early in 1804, informed of what happened [involving the British neglecting to assist Persia against Russian incursions]..., Napoleon approached the Shah, offering to help him drive back the Russians in return for the use of Persia as a land-bridge for a French invasion of India." - 33
• May 4, 1807: the Shah of Persia "signed a treaty with Napoleon...in which he agreed to sever all political and commercial relations with Britain, declare war on her, and allow French troops the right of passage" - 33
• "Fears of a Franco-Russian attack on India had brought home to those responsible for its defence how little they knew about the territories through which an invading army would have to march. Something had to be done quickly to remedy this, for all the treaties in the world would not stop a determined aggressor like Napoleon." - 36