The Unveiling of Lhasa

It was in these dismal surroundings that Colonel Younghusband's mission spent the months of January, February, and March. The small garrison suffered all the discomforts of Phari. The dirt and grime of the squalid little houses became so depressing that they pitched their tents in an open courtyard, preferring the numbing cold to the filth of the Tibetan hovels. Many of the sepoys fell victims to frost-bite and pneumonia, and nearly every case of pneumonia proved fatal, the patient dying of suffocation owing to the rarefied air.

Colonel Younghusband had not been at Tuna many days before it became clear that there could be no hope of a peaceful solution. The Tibetans began to gather in large numbers at Guru, eight miles to the east, on the road to Lhasa. The Depon, or Lhasa General, whom Colonel Younghusband met on two occasions, repeated that he was only empowered to treat on condition that we withdrew to Yatung. Messages were sent from the Tibetan camp to Tuna almost daily asking us to retire, and negociations again came to a deadlock. After a month the tone of the Tibetans became minatory. They threatened to invest our camp, and an attack was expected on March 1, the Tibetan New Year. The Lamas, however, thought better of it. They held a Commination Service instead, and cursed us solemnly for five days, hoping, no doubt, that the British force would dwindle away by the act of God. Nobody was 'one penny the worse.'

Though we made no progress with the Tibetans during this time, Colonel Younghusband utilized the halt at Tuna in cementing a friendship with Bhutan. The neutrality of the Bhutanese in the case of a war with Tibet was a matter of the utmost importance. Were these people unfriendly or disposed to throw in their lot with their co-religionists, the Tibetans, our line of communications would be exposed to a flank attack along the whole of the Tuna Plain, which is conterminous with the Bhutan frontier, as well as a rear attack anywhere in the Chumbi Valley as far south as Rinchengong. The Bhutanese are men of splendid physique, brave, warlike, and given to pillage. Their hostility would have involved the despatch of a second force, as large as that sent to Tibet, and might have landed us, if unprepared, in a serious reverse. The complete success of Colonel Younghusband's diplomacy was a great relief to the Indian Government, who were waiting with some anxiety to see what attitude the Bhutanese would adopt. Having secured from them assurances of their good will, Colonel Younghusband put their friendship to immediate test by broaching the subject of the Ammo Chu route to Chumbi through Bhutanese territory. Very little time was lost before the concession was obtained from the Tongsa Penlop, ruler of Bhutan, who himself accompanied the mission as far as Lhasa in the character of mediator between the Dalai Lama and the British Government. The importance of the Ammo Chu route in our future relations with Tibet I have emphasized elsewhere.

I doubt if ever an advance was more welcome to waiting troops than that which led to the engagement at the Hot Springs.

For months, let it be remembered, we had been marking time. When a move had to be made to escort a convoy, it was along narrow mountain-paths, where the troops had to march in single file. There was no possibility of an attack this side of Phari. The ground covered was familiar and monotonous. One felt cooped in, and was thoroughly bored and tired of the delay, so that when General Macdonald marched out of Phari with his little army in three columns, a feeling of exhilaration communicated itself to the troops.

Here was elbow-room at last, and an open plain, where all the army corps of Europe might manœuvre. At Tuna, on the evening of the 29th, it was given out in orders that a reconnaissance in force was to be made the next morning, and two companies of the 32nd Pioneers would be left at Guru. The Tibetan camp at the Hot Springs lay right across our line of march, and the hill that flanked it was lined with their sangars. They must either fight or retire. Most of us thought that the Tibetans would fade away in the mysterious manner they have, and build another futile wall further on. The extraordinary affair that followed must be a unique event in military history.

The morning of the 30th was bitterly cold. An icy wind was blowing, and snow was lying on the ground. I put on my thick sheepskin for the first time for two months, and I owe my life to it.

About an hour after leaving Tuna, two or three Tibetan messengers rode out from their camp to interview Colonel Younghusband. They got down from their ponies and began chattering in a very excited manner, like a flock of frightened parrots. It was evident to us, not understanding the language, that they were entreating us to go back, and the constant reference to Yatung told us that they were repeating the message that had been sent into the Tuna camp almost daily during the past few months – that if we retired to Yatung the Dalai Lama would send an accredited envoy to treat with us. Being met with the usual answer, they mounted dejectedly and rode off at a gallop to their camp.

Soon after they had disappeared another group of horsemen were seen riding towards us. These proved to be the Lhasa Depon, accompanied by an influential Lama and a small escort armed with modern rifles. The rifles were naturally inspected with great interest. They were of different patterns – Martini-Henri, Lee-Metford, Snider – but the clumsily-painted stocks alone were enough to show that they were shoddy weapons of native manufacture. They left no mark on our troops.

According to Tibetan custom, a rug was spread on the ground for the interview between Colonel Younghusband and the Lhasa Depon, who conferred sitting down. Captain O'Connor, the secretary of the mission, interpreted. The Lhasa Depon repeated the entreaty of the messengers, and said that there would be trouble if we proceeded. Colonel Younghusband's reply was terse and to the point.

'Tell him,' he said to Captain O'Connor, 'that we have been negociating with Tibet for fifteen years; that I myself have been waiting for eight months to meet responsible representatives from Lhasa, and that the mission is now going on to Gyantse. Tell him that we have no wish to fight, and that he would be well advised if he ordered his soldiers to retire. Should they remain blocking our path, I will ask General Macdonald to remove them.'

The Lhasa Depon was greatly perturbed. He said that he had no wish to fight, and would try and stop his men firing upon us. But before he left he again tried to induce Colonel Younghusband to turn back. Then he rode away to join his men. What orders he gave them will never be known.

I do not think the Tibetans ever believed in our serious intention to advance. No doubt they attributed our evacuation of Khamba Jong and our long delay in Chumbi to weakness and vacillation. And our forbearance since the negociations of 1890 must have lent itself to the same interpretation.

As we advanced we could see the Tibetans running up the hill to the left to occupy the sangars. To turn their position, General Macdonald deployed the 8th Gurkhas to the crest of the ridge; at the same time the Pioneers, the Maxim detachment of the Norfolks, and Mountain Battery were deployed on the right until the Tibetan position was surrounded.

The manœuvre was completely successful. The Tibetans on the hill, finding themselves outflanked by the Gurkhas, ran down to the cover of the wall by the main camp, and the whole mob was encircled by our troops.

It was on this occasion that the Sikhs and Gurkhas displayed that coolness and discipline which won them a European reputation. They had orders not to fire unless they were fired upon, and they walked right up to the walls of the sangars until the muzzles and prongs of the Tibetan matchlocks were almost touching their chests. The Tibetans stared at our men for a moment across the wall, and then turned and shambled down sulkily to join their comrades in the redan.

No one dreamed of the sanguinary action that was impending. I dismounted, and hastily scribbled a despatch on my saddle to the effect that the Tibetan position had been taken without a shot being fired. The mounted orderly who carried the despatch bore a similar message from the mission to the Foreign Office. Then the disarming began. The Tibetans were told that if they gave up their arms they would be allowed to go off unmolested. But they did not wish to give up their arms. It was a ridiculous position, Sikh and Mongol swaying backwards and forwards as they wrestled for the possession of swords and matchlocks. Perhaps the humour of it made one careless of the underlying danger. Accounts differ as to how this wrestling match developed into war, how, to the delight of the troops, the toy show became the 'real thing.' Of one thing I am certain, that a rush was made in the south-east corner before a shot was fired. If there had been any firing, I would not have been wandering about by the Tibetan flank without a revolver in my hand. As it was, my revolver was buried in the breast pocket of my Norfolk jacket under my poshteen.

I have no excuse for this folly except a misplaced contempt for Tibetan arms and courage – a contempt which accounted for our only serious casualty in the affair of 1888.[12 - When Colonel Bromhead pursued a Tibetan unarmed. Called upon to surrender, the Tibetan turned on Colonel Bromhead, cut off his right arm, and badly mutilated the left.] Also I think there was in the margin of my consciousness a feeling that one individual by an act of rashness might make himself responsible for the lives of hundreds. Hemmed in as the Tibetans were, no one gave them credit for the spirit they showed, or imagined that they would have the folly to resist. But we had to deal with the most ignorant and benighted people on earth, most of whom must have thought our magazine rifles and Maxims as harmless as their own obsolete matchlocks, and believed that they bore charms by which they were immune from death.

The attack on the south-east corner was so sudden that the first man was on me before I had time to draw my revolver.[13 - The reports sent home at the time of the Hot Springs affair were inaccurate as to the manner in which I was wounded, and also Major Wallace Dunlop, who was the only European anywhere near me at the time. Major Dunlop shot his own man, but at such close quarters that the Tibetan's sword slipped down the barrel of his rifle and cut off two fingers of his left hand. General Macdonald and Captain Bignell, who shot several men with their revolvers, were standing at the corner where the wall joined the ruined house, and did not see the attack on myself and Dunlop.] He came at me with his sword lifted in both hands over his head. He had a clear run of ten yards, and if I had not ducked and caught him by the knees he must have smashed my skull open. I threw him, and he dragged me to the ground. Trying to rise, I was struck on the temple by a second swordsman, and the blade glanced off my skull. I received the rest of my wounds, save one or two, on my hands – as I lay on my face I used them to protect my head. After a time the blows ceased; my assailants were all shot down or had fled. I lay absolutely still for a while until I thought it safe to raise my head. Then I looked round, and, seeing no Tibetans near in an erect position, I got up and walked out of the ring between the rifles of the Sikhs. The firing line had been formed in the meantime on a mound about thirty yards behind me, and I had been exposed to the bullets of our own men from two sides, as well as the promiscuous fire of the Tibetans.

The Tibetans could not have chosen a spot more fatal for their stand – a bluff hill to the north, a marsh and stream on the east, and to the west a stone wall built across the path, which they had to scale in their attempted assault on General Macdonald and his escort. Only one man got over. Inside there was barely an acre of ground, packed so thickly with seething humanity that the cross-fire which the Pioneers poured in offered little danger to their own men.

The Lhasa General must have fired off his revolver after I was struck down. I cannot credit the rumour that his action was a signal for a general attack, and that the Tibetans allowed themselves to be herded together as a ruse to get us at close quarters. To begin with, the demand that they should give up their arms, and the assurance that they might go off unmolested, must have been quite unexpected by them, and I doubt if they realized the advantage of an attack at close quarters.

My own impression is that the shot was the act of a desperate man, ignorant and regardless of what might ensue. To return to Lhasa with his army disarmed and disbanded, and without a shot having been fired, must have meant ruin to him, and probably death. When we reached Gyantse we heard that his property had been confiscated from his family on account of his failure to prevent our advance.

The Depon was a man of fine presence and bearing. I only saw him once, in his last interview with Colonel Younghusband, but I cannot dissociate from him a personal courage and a pride that must have rankled at the indignity of his position. Probably he knew that his shot was suicidal.

The action has been described as one of extreme folly. But what was left him if he lived except shame and humiliation? And what Englishman with the same prospect to face, caught in this dark eddy of circumstance, would not have done the same thing? He could only fire, and let his men take their chance, God help them!

And the rabble? They have been called treacherous. Why, I don't know. They were mostly impressed peasants. They did not wish to give up their arms. Why should they? They knew nothing of the awful odds against them. They were being hustled by white men who did not draw knives or fire guns. Amid that babel of 1,500 men, many of them may not have heard the command; they may not have believed that their lives would have been spared.

Looking back on the affair with all the sanity of experience, nothing is more natural than what happened. It was folly and suicide, no doubt; but it was human nature. They were not going to give in without having a fling. I hope I shall not be considered a pro-Tibetan when I say that I admire their gallantry and dash.

As my wounds were being dressed I peered over the mound at the rout. They were walking away! Why, in the name of all their Bodhisats and Munis, did they not run? There was cover behind a bend in the hill a few hundred yards distant, and they were exposed to a devastating hail of bullets from the Maxims and rifles, that seemed to mow down every third or fourth man. Yet they walked!

It was the most extraordinary procession I have ever seen. My friends have tried to explain the phenomenon as due to obstinacy or ignorance, or Spartan contempt for life. But I think I have the solution. They were bewildered. The impossible had happened.

Prayers, and charms, and mantras, and the holiest of their holy men, had failed them. I believe they were obsessed with that one thought. They walked with bowed heads, as if they had been disillusioned in their gods.

After the last of the retiring Tibetans had disappeared round the corner of the Guru road, the 8th Gurkhas descended from the low range of hills on the right of the position, and crossed the Guru Plain in extended order with the 2nd Mounted Infantry on their extreme left. Orders were then received by Major Row, commanding the detachment, to take the left of the two houses which were situated under the hills at the further side of the plain. This movement was carried out in conjunction with the mounted infantry. The advance was covered by the 7-pounder guns of the Gurkhas under Captain Luke, R.A. The attacking force advanced in extended order by a series of small rushes. Cover was scanty, but the Tibetans, though firing vigorously, fired high, and there were no casualties. At last the force reached the outer wall of the house, and regained breath under cover of it. A few men of the Gurkhas then climbed on to the roof and descended into the house, making prisoners of the inmates, who numbered forty or fifty. Shortly afterwards the door, which was strongly barricaded, was broken in, and the remainder of the force entered the house.

During the advance a number of the Tibetans attempted to escape on mules and ponies, but the greater number of these were followed up and killed. The Tibetan casualties were at least 700.

Perhaps no British victory has been greeted with less enthusiasm than the action at the Hot Springs. Certainly the officers, who did their duty so thoroughly, had no heart in the business at all. After the first futile rush the Tibetans made no further resistance. There was no more fighting, only the slaughter of helpless men.

It is easy to criticise after the event, but it seems to me that the only way to have avoided the lamentable affair at the Hot Springs would have been to have drawn up more troops round the redan, and, when the Tibetans were hemmed in with the cliff in their rear, to have given them at least twenty minutes to lay down their arms. In the interval the situation might have been made clear to everyone. If after the time-limit they still hesitated, two shots might have brought them to reason. Then, if they were mad enough to decide on resistance, their suicide would be on their own heads. But to send two dozen sepoys into that sullen mob to take away their arms was to invite disaster. Given the same circumstances, and any mob in the world of men, women, or children, civilized or savage, and there would be found at least one rash spirit to explode the mine and set a spark to a general conflagration.

It was thought at the time that the lesson would save much future bloodshed. But the Tibetan is so stubborn and convinced of his self-sufficiency that it took many lessons to teach him the disparity between his armed rabble and the resources of the British Raj. In the light of after-events it is clear that we could have made no progress without inflicting terrible punishment. The slaughter at Guru only forestalled the inevitable. We were drawn into the vortex of war by the Tibetans' own folly. There was no hope of their regarding the British as a formidable Power, and a force to be reckoned with, until we had killed several thousand of their men.

After the action the Tibetan wounded were brought into Tuna, and an abandoned dwelling-house was fitted up as a hospital. An empty cowshed outside served as an operating-theatre. The patients showed extraordinary hardihood and stoicism. After the Dzama Tang engagement many of the wounded came in riding on yaks from a distance of fifty or sixty miles. They were consistently cheerful, and always ready to appreciate a joke. One man, who lost both legs, said: 'In my next battle I must be a hero, as I cannot run away.' Some of the wounded were terribly mutilated by shell. Two men who were shot through the brain, and two who were shot through the lungs, survived. For two days Lieutenant Davys, Indian Medical Service, was operating nearly all day. I think the Tibetans were really impressed with our humanity, and looked upon Davys as some incarnation of a medicine Buddha. They never hesitated to undergo operations, did not flinch at pain, and took chloroform without fear. Their recuperative power was marvellous. Of the 168 who were received in hospital, only 20 died; 148 were sent to their homes on hired yaks cured. Everyone who visited the hospital at Tuna left it with an increased respect for the Tibetans.

Three months after the action I found the Tibetans still lying where they fell. One shot through the shoulder in retreat had spun as he fell facing our rifles. Another tore at the grass with futile fingers through which a delicate pink primula was now blossoming. Shrunk arms and shanks looked hideously dwarfish. By the stream the bodies lay in heaps with parched skin, like mummies, rusty brown. A knot of coarse black hair, detached from a skull, was circling round in an eddy of wind. Everything had been stripped from the corpses save here and there a wisp of cloth, looking more grim than the nakedness it covered, or round the neck some inexpensive charm, which no one had thought worth taking for its occult powers. Nature, more kindly, had strewn round them beautiful spring flowers – primulas, buttercups, potentils. The stream 'bubbled oilily,' and in the ruined house bees were swarming.

Ten miles beyond the Springs an officer was watering his horse in the Bamtso Lake. The beast swung round trembling, with eyes astare. Among the weeds lay the last victim.

CHAPTER VII

A HUMAN MISCELLANY

The Tibetans stood on the roofs of their houses like a row of cormorants, and watched the doolie pass underneath. At a little distance it was hard to distinguish the children, so motionless were they, from the squat praying-flags wrapped in black skin and projecting from the parapets of the roof. The very babes were impassive and inscrutable. Beside them perched ravens of an ebony blackness, sleek and well groomed, and so consequential that they seemed the most human element of the group.

My Tibetan bearers stopped to converse with a woman on the roof who wore a huge red hoop in her hair, which was matted and touzled like a negress's. A child behind was searching it, with apparent success. The woman asked a question, and the bearers jerked out a few guttural monosyllables, which she received with indifference. She was not visibly elated when she heard that the doolie contained the first victim of the Tibetan arms. I should like to have heard her views on the political situation and the question of a settlement. Some of her relatives, perhaps, were killed in the mêlée at the Hot Springs. Others who had been taken prisoners might be enlisted in the new doolie corps, and receiving an unexpected wage; others, perhaps, were wounded and being treated in our hospitals with all the skill and resources of modern science; or they were bringing in food-stuffs for our troops, or setting booby-traps for them, and lying in wait behind sangars to snipe them in the Red Idol Gorge.

The bearers started again; the hot sun and the continued exertion made them stink intolerably. Every now and then they put down the doolie, and began discussing their loot – ear-rings and charms, rough turquoises and ruby-coloured stones, torn from the bodies of the dead and wounded. For the moment I was tired of Tibet.

I remembered another exodus when I was disgusted with the country. I had been allured across the Himalayas by the dazzling purity of the snows. I had escaped the Avernus of the plains, and I might have been content, but there was the seduction of the snows. I had gained an upper story, but I must climb on to the roof. Every morning the Sun-god threw open the magnificent portals of his domain, dazzling rifts and spires, black cliffs glacier-bitten, the flawless vaulted roof of Kinchenjunga —

'Myriads of topaz lights and jacinth work
Of subtlest jewellery.'

One morning the roof of the Sun-god's palace was clear and cloudless, but about its base hung little clouds of snow-dust, as though the Olympians had been holding tourney, and the dust had risen in the tracks of their chariots. All this was seen over galvanized iron roofs. The Sun-god had thrown open his palace, and we were playing pitch and toss on the steps. While I was so engrossed I looked up. Columns of white cloud were rising to obscure the entrance. Then a sudden shaft of sunlight broke the fumes. There was a vivid flash, a dazzle of jewel-work, and the portals closed. I was covered with bashfulness and shame. It was a direct invitation. I made some excuse to my companion, said I had an engagement, went straight to my rooms, and packed.

But while the aroma of my carriers insulted the pure air, and their chatter over their tawdry spoil profaned the silent precincts of Chumulari, their mountain goddess, I thought more of the disenchantment of that earlier visit. I remembered sitting on a hillside near a lamasery, which was surrounded by a small village of Lamas' houses. Outside the temple a priest was operating on a yak for vaccine. He had bored a large hole in the shoulder, into which he alternately buried his forearm and squirted hot water copiously. A hideous yellow trickle beneath indicated that the poor beast was entirely perforated. A crowd of admiring little boys and girls looked on with relish. The smell of the poor yak was distressing, but the smell of the Lama was worse. I turned away in disgust – turned my back contentedly and without regret on the mysterious land and the road to the Forbidden City. At that moment, if the Dalai Lama himself had sent me a chaise with a dozen outriders and implored me to come, I would not have visited him, not for a thousand yaks. The scales of vagabondage fell from my eyes; the spirit of unrest died within me. I had a longing for fragrant soap, snowy white linen, fresh-complexioned ladies and clean-shaven, well-groomed men.

And here again I was returning very slowly to civilization; but I was coming back with half an army corps to shake the Dalai Lama on his throne – or if there were no throne or Dalai Lama, to do what? I wondered if the gentlemen sitting snugly in Downing Street had any idea.

At Phari I was snow-bound for a week, and there were no doolie-bearers. The Darjeeling dandy-wallahs were no doubt at the front, where they were most wanted, as the trained army doolie corps are plainsmen, who can barely breathe, much less work, at these high elevations. At last we secured some Bhutias who were returning to the front.

The Bhutia is a type I have long known, though not in the capacity of bearer. These men regarded the doolie with the invalid inside as a piece of baggage that had to be conveyed from one camp to another, no matter how. Of the art of their craft they knew nothing, but they battled with the elements so stoutly that one forgave them their awkwardness. They carried me along mountain-paths so slippery that a mule could find no foothold, through snow so deep and clogging that with all their toil they could make barely half a mile an hour; and they took shelter once from a hailstorm in which exposure without thick head-covering might have been fatal. Often they dropped the doolie, sometimes on the edge of a precipice, in places where one perspired with fright; they collided quite unnecessarily with stones and rocks; but they got through, and that was the main point. Men who have carried a doolie over a difficult mountain-pass (14,350 feet), slipping and stumbling through snow and ice in the face of a hurricane of wind, deserve well of the great Raj which they serve.

On the road into Darjeeling, owing to the absence of trained doolie-bearers, I met a human miscellany that I am not likely to forget. Eight miles beyond the Jelap lies the fort of Gnatong, whence there is a continual descent to the plains of India. The neighbouring hills and valleys had been searched for men; high wages were offered, and at last from some remote village in Sikkim came a dozen weedy Lepchas, simian in appearance, and of uncouth speech, who understood no civilized tongue. They had never seen a doolie, but in default of better they were employed. It was nobody's fault; bearers must be had, and the profession was unpopular. I was their 'first job.' I settled myself comfortably, all unconscious of my impending fate. They started off with a wild whoop, threw the doolie up in the air, caught it on their shoulders, and played cup and ball with the contents until they were tired. I swore at them in Spanish, English, and Hindustani, but it was small relief, as they didn't take the slightest notice, and I had neither hands to beat them nor feet to kick them over the khud. My orderly followed and told them in a mild North-Country accent that they would be punished if they did it again; there is some absurd army regulation about British soldiers striking followers. For all they knew, he was addressing the stars. They dropped the thing a dozen times in ten miles, and thought it the hugest joke in the world. I shall shy at a hospital doolie for the rest of my natural life.