But the scoring was not all on one side. Vich Ian Vohr boasted that the race of Ivor would seldom take the field with fewer than five hundred claymores; and the Sheikh of Barzan can muster certainly five thousand, and possibly twice that force. These levies were no more discommoded by the destruction of their "base of operations" than a swarm of the local red hornets whose nest has been demolished by a stone. Three of the seven regiments mobilized against them were captured _en bloc_ among the crags, with arms, ammunition, and artillery; and no commensurate losses were ever inflicted on the mountaineers.[83] Mosul was denuded of troops in order to maintain the struggle and the inhabitants were in a frenzy of terror lest the ubiquitous highlanders should swoop on the defenceless town. But that the Sheikh shrank from a step which would be bound to make the breach irreparable, it is indeed highly probable that these would have proved no empty fears. He is said to have declared roundly that if matters went much farther he intended to capture the place and make it over to the British Vice-Consul! That gentleman was by no means desirous of receiving so inconvenient a gift! A peace was concluded at last; and the Sheikh was pleased to attribute it very largely to the friendly offices of the British; though really the principal factor was the intervention of a level-headed _Vali_ at Mosul.[84] We did little more than insist that the Sheikh's wives ought to be set at liberty and treated with fitting distinction; and that, when the "conspiracy" of which he was accused had been officially admitted to be non-existent, there was no longer any valid reason for keeping the "conspirators" in jail. But the Sheikh is "easy with them that have shown themselves easy with him," and those who take the trouble to "'gree wi' Rob" are usually gainers on the deal. We traversed one of the battlefields in the course of our journey westward: a crater-like hollow in the wilderness, environed by steep stony hills. Here one of the Government regiments encountered the Sheikh and his army; for the Sheikh was present in person, though he left the actual conduct of operations to a certain Abd-'l-Kadr who acted as his "chief of the host." It was the first regular pitched battle, and the tribesmen were somewhat awed at the prospect of engaging the _Hukumet_; for which cause, in order to inspirit them, the Sheikh himself fired the first shot. In Kurdistan the firing of a gun constitutes an appeal for assistance; and the Sheikh, with fine dramatic instinct, fired his gun straight towards heaven, appealing to Allah Himself. The event of the day--the capture of the entire regiment, with three pieces of mountain artillery--was thus a prodigious enhancement of his Holiness's[85] personal prestige. Not only had he scored a valuable point in his secular and temporal capacity, but he was held to have signally vindicated his spiritual pre-eminence as well.