Whether Mahomed Shah ever rightly understood this matter I do not pretend to know, but he felt that it was necessary to make an effort to patch up the rents which this grievous failure had made in his reputation. So he issued a firman, setting forth all the great results of his expedition to the eastward, and attempted to demonstrate, after the following fashion, that he gained a victory, even at Herat:-“At last,” so ran the royal proclamation, “when the city of Herat existed but in name, and the reality of the government of Kamran was reduced to four bare walls, the noble ambassadors of the illustrious British Government, notwithstanding that three separate treaties of peace between the two governments of England and Persia, negotiated respectively by Sir Harford Jones, Sir Gore Ouseley, and Mr. Ellis, were still in force, disregarding the observance of the conditions of these treaties, prepared to undertake hostilities, and as a warlike demonstration, despatched a naval armament with troops and forces to the Gulf of Persia. The winter season was now approaching, and if we protracted to a longer period our stay at Herat, there appeared a possibility that our victorious army might suffer from a scarcity of provisions, and that the maintenance of our troops might not be unaccompanied with difficulty; the tranquillity of our provinces was also a matter of serious attention to our benevolent thoughts; and thus, in sole consideration of the interest of our faith and country, and from a due regard to the welfare of our troops and subjects, we set in motion our world-subduing army upon the 19th of _Jumady-al-Akber_, and prepared to return to our capital.... During the protracted siege of Herat, a vast number of the troops and inhabitants had perished, as well from the fire of our cannon and musketry as from constant hardship and starvation; the remainder of the people, amounting to about 50,000 families, with a large proportion of the Afghan and Persian chiefs, who had been treated with the most liberal kindness by the officers of our government, and who being compromised, could not possibly, therefore, hold any further intercourse with Yar Mahomed Khan, marched away with us, with zealous eagerness, to the regions of Khain and Khorassan, and there was no vestige of an inhabited spot left around Herat.”