India and Tibet / A history of the relations which have subsisted between the two countries from the time of Warren Hastings to 1910; with a particular account of the mission to Lhasa of 1904

by Sir Francis Edward Younghusband

On the afternoon of June 5 I received instructions from the Government of India to proceed to Chumbi, to confer with General Macdonald as to future plans. We had to a certain degree kept open our communications. Still, there were Tibetans all about, and it was a somewhat unusual, and certainly risky, proceeding for the chief of the Mission to have to ride 150 miles down the lines to consult the military commander. However, I was glad enough of the change from the monotony of our investment at Gyantse, and at four the next morning, while it was still dark, I rode out with an escort of forty mounted infantry, under Major Murray, and accompanied by that gallant doctor of the 8th Gurkhas, Dr. Franklin. We gave a wide berth to the Niani monastery, and arrived safely at Kangma, our first fortified post, forty miles distant, where Captain Pearson, of the 23rd Pioneers, was in command with about 100 men.

All was quiet here, and the post had never so far been attacked, owing probably to the effect of Colonel Brander’s action on the Karo-la, from which a route led direct to this place. I had risen at 4.30 the next morning to make an early start, and was just dressed when I heard that peculiar jackal-like yell which the Tibetans had used when they made their attacks at Gyantse. I instantly dashed on to the roof, and there, sure enough, was a mob of about 300 of them weighing down upon the post, and before our men were out they were right up to the walls, hurling stones and firing at me up on the roof, which was flat, and from which I could not for the moment find a way down. We all, dressed or undressed, dashed up to the walls, seizing the first rifles we could find, and firing away as hard as we could. And here again the Tibetans just lost their opportunity. As before, in a moment it was gone, and they suffered terribly for their want of military acumen. Sixty or seventy were killed, and the rest drew off up the mountains.

But this was not the only body of Tibetans about. While these were making the direct attack, two other bodies of 400 men each had appeared, all of them Kham men, the best fighters in Tibet. One party went up the valley and the other down, to cut off our retreat on either hand. This was a great strategical effort on the part of the Tibetan commander, but it failed, because as soon as the attack on our post was repulsed Major Murray sallied forth, and in turn attacked the other Tibetan parties, climbing the hillside and sending them helter-skelter over the mountains.

Then we had some breakfast, and I proceeded on my way to Chumbi. It was twenty-eight miles to the next stage, at Kala Tso, and there was considerable risk of encountering Tibetans on the way; but I argued that there was less risk immediately after a repulse than there might be a day or two later. So I set out with twenty mounted infantry, Major Murray and his men having to return to Gyantse. At Kala Tso I was welcomed by my old friends the 23rd Pioneers, under Colonel Hogge, who had been our escort at Tuna during all that terrible winter.

I now replied to a telegram I had received in the morning from Government, asking me to communicate my views on the general situation by telegram, as they wished to have them as soon as possible. I said, with reference to the contention which had been made by the military authorities that it would be impossible to keep troops at Lhasa after the autumn, that in my opinion “an effort should be made to quarter troops at Lhasa for the winter, for if we retired to Chumbi in November, we risked the loss of all the results of our present efforts, and the Tibetans would be still more obstructive.” I computed that the Lhasa and Gyantse valleys would support 1,000 men each. I hoped that while the ample forces now being sent would break down opposition during the summer months, it would be possible to keep in Lhasa a garrison, like that then at Gyantse, capable of holding its own for a whole winter. I added that if it was the case, as the military said, that troops could not be maintained in Lhasa during the winter, I had better not go to Lhasa at all, for there was little use in my commencing negotiations with two such obstructive people as the Tibetans and Chinese in any place where I could not stay a full year, if necessary. I had been eleven months trying even to begin negotiations. I should be quite unable to complete them in two or three months, especially if the Chinese and Tibetans knew we intended to leave before the winter.

The substance of this telegram I still think was perfectly sound, but its tone I do not now in cold blood seek to defend. I must confess that during all this Gyantse period I was not so steady and imperturbable as an agent should be. Perhaps the prolonged stay at very high altitudes was beginning to tell, for even Gyantse was over 13,000 feet. Perhaps it was the greater realization that nothing ever would be effected short of Lhasa, and that this playing about at Khamba Jong, at Tuna, and at Gyantse was merely for the benefit of the distant British elector. Or it may have been the difficulty of reconciling military with political considerations. Or possibly it was reading in the newspapers now arriving from England the accusations of cruelty, injustice, and oppression which were being publicly brought against the Mission, and the prophecies of disaster, such as befell Cavagnari, which were to come on us also. Whatever it was, I certainly became very restive, and now earned a rebuff from the Government of India, which only made me worse, and determined me to give up the whole business. It seemed so easy to carry through if we only went straight at it, so utterly impossible when in England they were only half-hearted. I see now that I ought to have gone stolidly and cheerily on, for Governments, too, have innumerable difficulties of their own. Still, this was not easy at the time.

It was tolerably certain a fortnight after my arrival at Gyantse that the Tibetans did not seriously mean to negotiate, and if we had to go to Lhasa, it was urgently necessary to make early preparations for an advance, so that another whole summer might not pass away without result. Yet I was undoubtedly premature in breathing the word Lhasa so early as the end of April. It was clear to me that if we wished to make a well-thought-out, complete, and lasting settlement with the Tibetans and the Chinese combined, and if we wished—what I always regarded as much more important than any paper settlement, and as our real object in going to Tibet—the establishment of a good feeling between ourselves and the Tibetans, we must not only go to Lhasa, but be able to stay there for an ample period. Yet when I stated this opinion to Government, I should, I acknowledge, have given it in a less brusque way than I did in the telegram I have quoted.

I had this much in excuse. I had, as I have related, at dawn on the day I sent that telegram, and before having had my breakfast, been attacked by the Tibetans, and had myself to fight with a rifle in my hand. I had had, after breakfast, to ride nearly thirty miles with the constant risk of further attack on the way. I had had to do all this after being cooped up for a month in a house without being able to stir outside it. I had therefore to compose and cipher my telegram when I was physically exhausted and depressed in spirit. I knew that military considerations, and Imperial considerations, and international considerations, and every other consideration which hampers action, were dead against my proposal, and I was not in the mood to be respectful towards them. Still, I was ill-advised to let my telegram have the slightest tinge of brusqueness in it. If I wanted to get the thing done, I should have preserved that marvellous imperturbability and cheery good sense which, from the Strangers’ Gallery, I have so frequently admired in British Ministers in the House of Commons. All this I note for the benefit of future leaders of unpopular Missions. For the effect of my telegram was not to further the object I had in view—the making of all preparations for keeping the Mission at Lhasa for the winter, if need be. It merely earned for me a reprimand from Government, who telegraphed back on June 14 that they found it necessary to remind me that any definite proposals I made for their consideration should be, as far as possible, in conformity with the orders and present policy of His Majesty’s Government; and I was to remember that the policy of His Majesty’s Government was based on considerations of international relations wider than the mere relations between India and Tibet, which were not only beyond my purview, but also beyond the purview of the Government of India. They expected me, therefore, to do my utmost to carry out the present plans until there was unquestionable proof that they were impracticable. It was impossible, I was told, to argue the political necessity for remaining at Lhasa during the winter until I had arrived there and gauged the situation; and the military objections were great and obvious.

My reply to this is not published, so I will not quote it. I will only say that I pretty well despaired of getting this business through. Lord Curzon was away in England, and evidently now military, and not political, considerations were having the upper hand. I knew about the “international relations” and the “wider view,” for copies of all the important despatches to our Ambassadors were sent to me. But there were dozens and scores of men to represent those “wider” views, which need not, as is so often imagined, be wiser simply because they are wider, whereas there was only one person, and that was myself, to represent the narrower view, but which, because it was local, need not be inferior or less important.

The narrow local point of view was, then, that for thirty years continuously we in India had been trying to settle a trumpery affair of trade and boundary with a semi-barbarous people on our frontier, and time after time we had been put off by these “considerations of international relations wider than the mere relations between India and Tibet.” But now we had the chance of a century of settling this business once and for all. We had, after years of negotiations and correspondence, made our effort. We had taken immense trouble and gone to great expense. And all I wished to do was to represent from my restricted point of view that I ought to have plenty of time to make the most of this opportunity. I should have represented my views in less provocative language, I admit; but the main contention was, I am sure, sound, and it would have been better now if it had been acted on. If I had not been rushed at Lhasa, but had had plenty of time to gauge and report the situation there, and to receive the orders of Government on any modifications which might be suggested by the circumstances, I should have been able to conclude with both the Chinese and Tibetans a treaty which my own Government as well as they would have accepted.