130 A systematic campaign against the new Faith had been launched in Persia by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities combined. The believers, cut down wherever they were isolated, banded together when they could, for protection against the Government, the clergy, and the people. Betrayed and surrounded as they passed through the forest of Mázindarán, some 300 believers, mostly students and recluses, built the Fort of _Sh_ay_kh_ Tabarsí and held out against the armies of Persia for eleven months. Cf. The Dawn-Breakers, chapters XIX and XX; God Passes By, p. 37 et seq. 131 On August 15, 1852, a half-crazed Bábí youth wounded the _Sh_áh with shot from a pistol. The assailant was instantly killed, and the authorities carried out a wholesale massacre of the believers, its climax described by Renan as “a day perhaps unparalleled in the history of the world.” Cf. Lord Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, pp. 501–2, and God Passes By, p. 62 et seq.