Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat (16 page)

The Mission’s armed escort included Gurkha infantry and Sikh pioneers, besides the British gunners and Maxim men, and on December 11, preceded by a man on horseback carrying a Union Jack, they moved off through the snow towards the Tibetan frontier. This really was like one of the classic Anglo-Indian enterprises of the previous century: the long winding caravan along the mountain tracks, the monotonous chanting of the Lucknow litter-bearers—

—the old smells of dung, sweat and leather, the great woodfires when the camp was pitched at night, the grunts of restless animals and lascivious porters, the handful of Englishmen huddled in their tents as they smoked their pipes and drank their last whiskies before turning in. On the march the expedition extended for many miles, and when its advance guard reached the head of the passes, 14,000 feet up and cruelly cold, its rearguard was only emerging from the tree-line far below: but by December 13, 1903 every last yak and zebrule had crossed the frontier of Tibet, and the Mission was encamped in a pine forest beneath the Union Jack, surrounded by its multitude of guards, bearers and beasts of burden.

Tibet had been invaded, though first to last Curzon never used the word, and a British armed force lay within the Forbidden Land. This is what the Viceroy intended all along, but the British Government at home only half realized what was being done in their name. Balfour’s was not a bold Cabinet, and among its least swashbuckling adherents was St John Brodrick, who became, in October 1903, Secretary of State for India. Evasive, ambitious, with piggy eyes and a determined mouth, Brodrick was hardly an imperialist in the high old style, and it was not surprising that he had a complex about Curzon. They had been at school and at Oxford together, and in the manner of the times Brodrick had often declared his changeless admiration and affection for his glittering contemporary—whenever Curzon won a prize, or was promoted, or published a book, or became Viceroy, Brodrick was among the first to congratulate him. Festering away there, though, was an inner resentment, only awaiting outlet: and just as Younghusband’s little army prepared itself for its march into Tibet, conveying Curzon’s mastery across the roof of the world, the moment of revelation arrived: for at the end of October Brodrick assumed the seals of his office, and thus became George Curzon’s immediate superior.

Almost the first thing he did was to make clear that he was not going to be held responsible for the Tibet Expedition. ‘In view of the recent conduct of the Tibetans,’ he telegraphed his old friend, ‘His Majesty’s Government feel that it would be impossible not to take action, and they accordingly sanctioned the advance of the Mission to Gyangtse. They are, however, clearly of the opinion that this step should not be allowed to lead to occupation or to permanent intervention in Tibetan affairs in any form. The advance should be made for the sole purpose of obtaining satisfaction, and as soon as reparation is obtained a withdrawal should be effected. While His Majesty’s Government consider the proposed action to be necessary, they are not prepared to establish a permanent mission in Tibet, and the question of enforcing trade facilities in that country must be considered in the light of the decisions conveyed in this telegram.’

This was a far cry from Omdurman or Fashoda: Brodrick’s directive was a
caveat
, to be quoted when the need arose, or kept as a hedge against political embarrassment. The truth was that the British Government of 1903, like the British public that elected it, was not conditioned to such an imperial
coup-de-théâtre
. Balfour and his Ministers did not really know what to do about the Tibet Expedition, and hoped it would somehow come to nothing, or alternatively not take long.

In fact it progressed slowly. It met no opposition, but took no chances. By Christmas, 1903 the British were sixty miles into Tibet, and had occupied the awful town of Phari, where the filth of generations was piled so high against the houses that holes had to be scooped in the excrement to give access to front doors. By the New Year of 1904 they were moving across a bitter snowy plain, where wild asses ranged and skirmished, to Tuna, 15‚000 feet up. There they stayed for three months, and there Younghusband again met delegates from Lhasa. The lamas were no more accommodating than before. They denied all contact with the Russians, they said the British were behaving like thieves and brigands, and they demanded that Younghusband should withdraw at once—‘using forms of speech’, Younghusband reported indignantly to Curzon, ‘only used in addressing inferiors’.

Not until the end of March did the expedition resume its progress towards Gyangtse. Younghusband, noting that in the mornings the snow summits became ‘the most ethereal blue shading into the cerulean blue of the sky above’, derived only ‘a sense of peace and quiet and coming joy’ from the prospect: and though a horrible wind often swept off the mountains, scoring everything with grit and stinging the soldiers’ faces, still everyone was glad to be on the move again. Bent half-double against the wind, coat-collars up, heads down, the little force moved off through a landscape of gravel, rock and snow. They had brought collapsible carts with them, and these, the first wheeled vehicles ever seen in Tibet, now carried their gear. Mounted infantry fanned out in front, the four guns were
in the middle, and the column now numbered a thousand rifles.

Some ten miles from Tuna, a hundred miles within Tibet, they reached a hamlet called Guru. There the track led between an escarpment and a dry salt lake, overlooked by a range of stupendous snow peaks, and there on the gravel flats the Tibetans had built a barricade against them. It was a large crude rampart of stones, placed naively across the track, and through their binoculars the British could see that all around it a mass of Tibetans milled and swarmed, like brown bees against the scree. The expedition was in no mood to be delayed, and so within a few minutes, on March 31, 1904, between 600 and 700 Tibetans sacrificed their lives to the imperial purpose.

The barricade was nothing. It could easily be outflanked, and anyway a few shells would destroy it. The British approached it cautiously, nevertheless, and soon a group of Tibetan horsemen rode out to meet them. They came, they said, to warn the expedition to turn back, but Younghusband dismissed them abruptly. Nothing would stop the British marching to Gyangtse, he said, and if they were opposed they would fight. The guns were assembled, the troops prepared for action, the Tibetans were given fifteen minutes to clear the road: if they failed to do so, the expedition would break a way through.

The time passed. The Tibetans did not move. In open order across the gravel plain, on a grey and bitter day, the infantry moved slowly forwards, with orders not to fire unless fired upon. Silence hung over the scene. The troops moved in absolute silence towards the silent barricade. Gurkhas silently climbed the escarpment, Sikhs silently turned the flank of the barricades, the ponies of the mounted infantry trotted silently up the valley to cover the line of retreat. Before the wall the artillery was ready: on the higher ground to the east the six-foot Maxim gunners of the Norfolk Regiment, squatting behind their tripods, cocked their weapons and waited.

Below them the Tibetans were ready to be slaughtered. They were surrounded now, entirely covered from higher ground, within
easy artillery range. Their only line of retreat was blocked. Yet they did nothing. Some stood to their guns at the barricade loopholes, the rest aimlessly ambled about, watching with bewilderment the methodical positioning of the British all around. Their leader, a handsome and powerfully built lama, brown-cloaked and felt-booted, sat with sword in hand actually
outside
the defences: his men, who had never seen a machine-gun before, simply gaped and speculated. These were truly strangers meeting, beside the salt lake on the road to Gyangtse. The two sides looked at each other hardly in hostility, perhaps not even in fear, but in astonishment.

It seemed best to disarm the Tibetans, before some terrible mistake occurred: so a detachment of Sikhs and Gurkhas walked impassively into the crowd, and began to seize their matchlocks, clubs and swords. Some handed them over without protest, but others refused, until all around the wall little groups of men were struggling for weapons, sometimes wrestling, sometimes pushing and hitting each other. Now the silence was broken. There were shouts, curses, blows, and at last, late in the morning, a single shot. The Tibetan commander himself fired it. Seeing the trouble fester, he had mounted his pony and ridden into the crowd to intervene. When a Sikh seized his bridle, the lama drew a pistol from his belt and shot the Indian through the jaw.

At once a battle began. The Tibetans fired their old muskets furiously, and slashed about with their swords, and kicked, and clubbed, and shouted, but it only lasted a minute or two. The sepoys withdrew, and at point-blank range from either side the massed British riflemen opened fire upon the Tibetan mass, while the Maxims sent a stream of fire into the mêlée behind the wall. There was no need to aim precisely. The target was unmissable, and could not escape. Soon the artillery opened fire. Shrapnel shells burst behind the Tibetans, scattering iron fragments, stones and gravel among the mob. In the distance the British mounted infantry prepared to fall upon the retreat.

The Tibetans did not panic. They seemed more appalled than alarmed, as though their gods had let them down. They turned away from the wall, sorrowfully, and walked very slowly along the track to the north—‘with bowed heads’, one eye-witness reported. In a
long straggling line of brown they retreated, figures of sad reproach, to disappear behind a spur in the hill half a mile away. The soldiers fired at them sporadically as they went, and now and then one would fall: but slowly they walked away, as if they were lost in prayer or thought, until one by one they were gone behind the hill.

The British let them go. They were aghast. ‘It was an awful sight‚’ wrote one officer. ‘The slowness of their escape was horrible and loathsome to see.’ Half the Tibetan force had been killed, including its commander: six of the imperial force had been wounded. The British slept that night chastened by their own victory, and Younghusband wrote one of his less visionary letters to his father next day. ‘I was so absolutely sick at that so-called fight’, he reported, ‘that I was quite out of sorts.’
1

To Lord Curzon he reported differently, as the expedition resumed its march to Gyangtse. The massacre of the Tibetans, he told the Viceroy, had been ‘an exemplary punishment’ which would live in the memories of the Tibetan people for ages—especially as the total British losses had been ‘two fingers and an arm’.
2
Moreover the affray had given Lord Curzon the ideal pretext for sending the expedition still further into Tibet, to the palace of the Dalai Lama at Lhasa itself.

Away in London Brodrick and his colleagues were not so sure. They were at twos and threes on Tibet. That summer Curzon went home on leave, and tried to stiffen their resolve, but he failed. Some thought the country should be placed under British paramountcy, like Nepal, or obliged to accept a permanent British Agent in Lhasa, or simply be taught an old-fashioned imperial lesson—a few houses burnt down, an indemnity exacted. Others again believed the whole venture should be cancelled, and that Younghusband should be
withdrawn at once to India. Scared of Russian or even Chinese reactions, timid of offering hostages to fortune, hindered by inner rivalries, sensitive to public opinion on the eve of an election, wildly ignorant of Tibet and bureaucratically suspicious of the men on the spot, they lacked the élan either to send the Flag dominant to Lhasa, or to admit an error and call the Mission home.

In all this they truly demonstrated the weakening of the Empire’s confidence. Younghusband had fought his way to Gyangtse, constantly harassed by the Tibetans, and by the end of July was ready to march upon Lhasa itself: but when at last he was ordered to do so, his instructions were limp. He was not to occupy Tibet, or make a protectorate of it, or even insist upon the opening of a British Agency in the capital. He was merely to conclude a trade agreement, extract an indemnity, and insist that Tibet must not deal with foreign Powers without British consent. How these demands were to be enforced His Majesty’s Government did not say, but Younghusband was not perturbed. He set off for Lhasa in high spirits, eager for the climax of ‘the magnificent business’.

The weather was splendid now. The valley of the Kyi Chu was fertile and inviting. The column, reinforced by four companies of the Royal Fusiliers for the sake of prestige, plodded its way along the dusty road full of expectancy. Dragon-flies and butterflies fluttered through the thin brilliant air, clematis clambered over the roadside boulders, unfamiliar birds called, cows anomalously grazed. At each bend in the road the soldiers expected to see the fabulous city, but it was masked by a succession of spurs and ridges, and by thickets of poplars and willow trees. They were almost in the outskirts of the place when the advance guard of horsemen scrambled up a bluff and saw below them, a golden jumble of roofs, a slab of white stonework, a flash of turquoise tapestries, the legendary palace of the Dalai Lama, the Potala of Lhasa.

‘I question’, wrote Edmund Candler, ‘if ever in the history of the world there has been another occasion when bigotry and darkness have been exposed with such abruptness to the inroad of science,
when a barrier of ignorance created by jealousy and fear as a screen between two peoples living side by side has been demolished so suddenly to admit the light of an advanced civilization.’ Once the marvellous shock of the Potala was over, though, Younghusband’s entry into Lhasa offered only anticlimax. It was on August 4, 1904, that he entered the capital, preceded by an escort of the Amban’s bodyguard, and followed by a company of the Royal Fusiliers. He wore full-dress diplomatic uniform, with a plumed hat and braided trousers: the British infantry behind him, in their khaki drill and sun-helmets, marched with a proper pride as the first European soldiers ever to enter the capital: but when they got inside the gates, they found only squalor and disillusion.