The Unveiling of Lhasa

by Edmund Candler

From Ralung, ten miles this side of the Karo la, two roads branch off to India. The road leading to Kangma is the shortest route; the other road makes a détour of thirty miles to include Gyantse. Ralung lies at the apex of the triangle, as shown in this rough diagram. Gyantse and Kangma form the two base angles.

If it had been possible, a strong post would have been left at the Karo la after the action of May 6. But our small force was barely sufficient to garrison Gyantse, and we had to leave the alternative approach to Kangma unguarded. An attack was expected there; the post was strongly fortified, and garrisoned by two companies of the 23rd Pioneers, under Captain Pearson.

The attack, which was made on June 7, was unexpectedly dramatic. We have learnt that the Tibetan has courage, but in other respects he is still an unknown quantity. In motive and action he is as mysterious and unaccountable as his paradoxical associations would lead us to imagine. In dealing with the Tibetans one must expect the unexpected. They will try to achieve the impossible, and shut their eyes to the obvious. They have a genius for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Their élan, their dogged courage, their undoubted heroism, their occasional acuteness, their more general imbecile folly and vacillation and inability to grasp a situation, make it impossible to say what they will do in any given circumstances. A few dozen men will hurl themselves against hopeless odds, and die to a man fighting desperately; a handful of impressed peasants will devote themselves to death in the defence of a village, like the old Roman patriots. At other times they will forsake a strongly sangared position at the first shot, and thousands will prowl round a camp at night, shouting grotesquely, but too timid to make a determined attack on a vastly outnumbered enemy.

The uncertainty of the enemy may be accounted for to some extent by the fact that we are not often opposed by the same levies, which would imply that theirs is greatly the courage of ignorance. Yet in the face of the fighting at Palla, Naini, and Gyantse Jong, this is evidently no fair estimate of the Tibetan spirit. The men who stood in the breach at Gyantse in that hell of shrapnel and Maxim and rifle fire, and dropped down stones on our Gurkhas as they climbed the wall, met death knowingly, and were unterrified by the resources of modern science in war, the magic, the demons, the unseen, unimagined messengers of death.

But the men who attacked the Kangma post, what parallel in history have we for these? They came by night many miles over steep mountain cliffs and rocky ravines, perhaps silently, with determined purpose, weighing the odds; or, as I like to think, boastfully, with song and jest, saying, 'We will steal in upon these English at dawn before they wake, and slay them in their beds. Then we will hold the fort, and kill all who come near.'

They came in the gray before dawn, and hid in a gully beside our camp. At five the reveillé sounded and the sentry left the bastions. Then they sprang up and rushed, sword in hand, their rifles slung behind their backs, to the wall. The whole attack was directed on the south-east front, an unscalable wall of solid masonry, with bastions at each corner four feet thick and ten feet high. They directed their attack on the bastions, the only point on that side they could scramble over. They knew nothing of the fort and its tracing. Perhaps they had expected to find us encamped in tents on the open ground. But from the shallow nullah where they lay concealed, not 200 yards distant, and watched our sentry, they could survey the uncompromising front which they had set themselves to attack with the naked sword. They had no artillery or guncotton or materials for a siege, but they hoped to scale the wall and annihilate the garrison that held it. They had come from Lhasa to take Kangma, and they were not going to turn back. They came on undismayed, like men flushed with victory. The sepoys said they must be drunk or drugged. They rushed to the bottom of the wall, tore out stones, and flung them up at our sepoys; they leapt up to seize the muzzles of our rifles, and scrambled to gain a foothold and lift themselves on to the parapet; they fell bullet-pierced, and some turned savagely on the wall again. It was only a question of time, of minutes, and the cool mechanical fire of the 23rd Pioneers would have dropped every man. One hundred and six bodies were left under the wall, and sixty more were killed in the pursuit. Never was there such a hopeless, helpless struggle, such desperate and ineffectual gallantry.

Almost before it was light the yak corps with their small escort of thirty rifles of the 2nd Gurkhas were starting on the road to Kalatso. They had passed the hiding-place of the Tibetans without noticing the 500 men in rusty-coloured cloaks breathing quietly among the brown stones. Then the Tibetans made their charge, just as the transport had passed, and a party of them made for the yaks. Two Tibetan drivers in our service stood directly in their path. 'Who are you?' cried one of the enemy. 'Only yak-drivers,' was the frightened answer. 'Then, take that,' the Tibetan said, slashing at his arm with no intent to kill. The Gurkha escort took up a position behind a sangar and opened fire—all save one man, who stood by his yak and refused to come under cover, despite the shouts and warnings of his comrades. He killed several, but fell himself, hacked to pieces with swords. The Tibetans were driven off, and joined the rout from the fort. The whole affair lasted less than ten minutes.

Our casualties were: the isolated Gurkha killed, two men in the fort wounded by stones, and three of the 2nd Gurkhas severely wounded—two by sword-cuts, one by a bullet in the neck.

But what was the flame that smouldered in these men and lighted them to action? They might have been Paladins or Crusaders. But the Buddhists are not fanatics. They do not stake eternity on a single existence. They have no Mahdis or Juggernaut cars. The Tibetans, we are told, are not patriots. Politicians say that they want us in their country, that they are priest-ridden, and hate and fear their Lamas. What, then, drove them on? It was certainly not fear. No people on earth have shown a greater contempt for death. Their Lamas were with them until the final assault. Twenty shaven polls were found hiding in the nullah down which the Tibetans had crept in the dark, and were immediately despatched. What promises and cajoleries and threats the holy men used no one will ever know. But whatever the alternative, their simple followers preferred death.