For many months the Japanese had watched with growing apprehension the Russian military and naval build-up in the Far East, which directly threatened their own interests there. They had noted with particular alarm the Russians’ relentless infiltration of Korea, for this brought them dangerously close to Japan’s own shores. The Japanese knew, moreover, that time was against them. Once the Trans-Siberian Railway was finished, the Russians would be able to bring up vast numbers of troops, heavy artillery and other war materials from Europe in the event of war. For these reasons, and after much agonising, the Japanese High Command decided to do what the British, wisely or otherwise, had never risked doing in Central Asia. This was to meet the Russian threat head on. On February 8, 1904, the Japanese struck without warning. Their target was the great Russian naval base at Port Arthur. The Russo-Japanese War had begun.
News of its outbreak reached the Younghusband mission as it approached the small village of Guru, half-way to Gyantse, now only fifty miles off. Without spilling a drop of Tibetan blood, Younghusband and his escort had successfully overcome three major obstacles – the 14,000-foot Jelap Pass, a defensive wall which the Tibetans had built across their path, and the fortress at Phari, which at 15,000 feet was said to be the highest in the world. Each had fallen without a fight. It was at this moment that the Tibetan mood began to change, with the arrival at Guru of a group of warrior monks from Lhasa, the capital, who had orders to halt the British advance. They were accompanied by 1,500 Tibetan troops armed with matchlocks and sacred charms – each one bearing the Dalai Lama’s personal seal. These, their priests promised them, would make them bullet-proof.
Younghusband’s escort commander, Brigadier-General James Macdonald, quickly moved his Gurkhas and Sikhs into position around the Tibetans, wholly surrounding them. Then the mission’s Tibetan-speaking intelligence officer, Captain Frederick O’Connor, was sent to call for them to lay down their arms. But the Tibetan commander ignored him, muttering incomprehensibly to himself. Orders were now given by Macdonald for the Tibetans to be disarmed, forcibly if necessary, and sepoys detailed for this task began to wrestle the matchlocks from their reluctant hands. This was too much for the Tibetan commander. Drawing a revolver from beneath his robes, he blew the jaw off a nearby sepoy, at the same time calling on his troops to fight. The Tibetans immediately hurled themselves on the escort, only to be shot down by the highly trained Gurkhas and Sikhs. In less than four minutes, as their medieval army disintegrated before the murderous fire of modern weaponry, nearly 700 ill-armed and ragged Tibetans lay dead or dying on the plain.
‘It was a terrible and ghastly business,’ wrote Younghusband, echoing the feelings of all the officers and men. As head of the mission, however, he had taken no part in the killing, and had hoped for another bloodless victory. Why Macdonald did not order an immediate ceasefire the instant he saw what was happening is not clear. As it was, the firing continued while the Tibetans, not realising perhaps what was happening, streamed slowly away across the plain. Possibly Macdonald did try to halt the killing, but was not heard above the sound of the machine-guns and other clamour. As the subaltern commanding the machine-guns wrote in a letter to his parents: ‘I hope I shall never have to shoot down men walking away again.’ When word of the massacre reached London, it was to outrage liberal opinion, even though the mission doctors worked around the clock trying to save the lives of as many of the Tibetan wounded as possible. Remarkable stoicism was shown by the latter, some of whom were badly mutilated. One man, who had lost both his legs, joked pitifully with the surgeons: ‘Next time I shall have to be a hero, as I can no longer run away.’ The wounded found it hard to understand, Younghusband noted, ‘why we should try to take their lives one day and try to save them the next.’ They had expected to be shot out of hand.
Far from slackening, Tibetan resistance grew stiffer as the British advance on Gyantse was resumed. Tibetan casualties, too, continued to mount. At the spectacular Red Idol Gorge, twenty miles from Gyantse, 200 more perished before the mission could safely pass through the defile. In what was possibly the highest engagement ever fought, a further 400 Tibetans died in the fierce struggle for the 16,000-foot Karo Pass. British casualties amounted to only 5 killed and 13 wounded. In view of their unexpected resistance (organised by the mysterious Zerempil, according to the German traveller Filchner), London foresaw that the Tibetans were unlikely to agree to talks with Younghusband at Gyantse. Younghusband was instructed therefore to warn the Tibetans that unless they did so within a given period, the British would march on Lhasa itself. In view of the sanctity with which they regarded their capital, it was reasoned that this would bring the Tibetans to the negotiating table. But the expiry date passed without any sign of them. Ten days later, on July 5, 1904, the order was given to advance on Lhasa. Considerable excitement was felt by all ranks at the prospect of entering the most secretive city on earth, while the outbreak of the war between Russia and Japan had dispelled any fears of countermoves by St Petersburg.
Before the British could advance, though, the great fortress of Gyantse, perched on a precipitous outcrop of rock high above the town, had to be taken. Macdonald’s attack was launched at four in the morning, after the wall had been breached by concentrated artillery fire. A storming party, led by Lieutenant John Grant, crept forward in the darkness and began the hazardous climb towards the breach. Soon, however, the Tibetans spotted them and began showering large boulders down on them. Grant, revolver in hand, had almost reached the breach when he was knocked violently backwards by a rock. Despite his injuries, the young Gurkha subaltern tried again. This time, watched from below by the entire British force, he made it through the hail of missiles. With several Gurkhas at his heels, he entered the fortress, shooting down a number of the defenders. Moments later the rest of the storming party were through the breach. A fierce struggle for the Tibetan stronghold, which was said to be invincible, ensued. This continued until late afternoon, when Tibetan resistance finally broke. The defenders, who had fought with great courage, now fled, slipping away through secret underground tunnels known only to themselves, or over the walls using ropes. They left behind more than 300 dead and wounded, while British casualties totalled just 4 killed and 30 wounded. Grant was later awarded the Victoria Cross, the only one ever to be won on Tibetan soil.
When news of Gyantse’s fall reached Lhasa, it caused utter dismay. For there was an ancient belief that were the fortress to fall into an invader’s hands the country was doomed. At last this had happened. After overcoming one last stand by the Tibetans, the British reached the banks of the wide and swift-flowing Tsangpo river, the only remaining obstacle between them and Lhasa. The crossing, using canvas boats, took five full days to complete, an officer and two Gurkhas being swept to their deaths in the course of it. The road to the Tibetan capital, barred for so long to the outside world, was now open. Two days later, on August 2, 1904, the British got their first glimpse of the holy city from a nearby hill. Turning in his saddle to his intelligence officer, Younghusband said simply: ‘Well, O’Connor, there it is at last.’ Fifteen years earlier, as a young subaltern, he had dreamed of entering Lhasa disguised as a Yarkandi trader, but his superiors had turned down the idea as too perilous. Since then, a succession of European travellers had tried to get there, though all had been turned back. The next day, with only a small escort, and in full diplomatic regalia, Younghusband rode into the holy city.
·37·
End-game
The war in the East, meanwhile, had been going badly for the Russians. When, seven months earlier, the Japanese launched their surprise attack on Port Arthur, few people believed that they stood a chance against the awesome might of Tsar Nicholas. In addition to his powerful Pacific fleet, he had a million-strong regular army, supported by twice that number of reservists, to call on, while Japan had only 270,000 regulars and 530,000 reservists. The Russians were quite confident, therefore, that they could swiftly crush this upstart Asiatic nation of ‘yell
ow apes’, as they called the Japanese, which had dared to challenge them. After all, they had immense experience of warfare in Asia, and no one there had managed to withstand their onslaught.
In their initial attack on the great Russian naval base of Port Arthur, the Japanese had clearly hoped to destroy their fleet, as they were to do with the American Pacific fleet thirty-seven years later at Pearl Harbor. In the event, their ten destroyers only managed to damage three battleships, albeit one seriously, as they lay at anchor in the roads. In a second attack a few hours later another battleship and three cruisers were damaged, while off the Korean coast a fourth cruiser and a gunboat were sunk. Despite heavy fire from the Russian shore batteries, the Japanese warships, led by the brilliant Admiral Togo, got off singularly lightly. But even if they had failed to sink the Russian Pacific fleet, they had gravely undermined its morale. The following day both governments declared war on one another. The conflict was to last eighteen months, and lead indirectly to the fall, thirteen years later, of the Russian monarchy.
From then on, little seemed to go right for the Russians. Very early on they lost both their commander-in-chief and their flagship when the latter struck a mine which the Japanese had laid in the approaches to Port Arthur. Soon the Russians found themselves virtually imprisoned in the heavily defended naval base, as the Japanese, through superior tactics and leadership, made themselves masters of the sea. On land, too, the Japanese rapidly began to gain the upper hand, inflicting a series of defeats on the Russians, albeit often at great cost to themselves in lives. In May Russian troops were defeated on the Yalu river, and the following month the Japanese occupied the commercial port of Dalny, only twenty miles from Port Arthur. At St Petersburg, meanwhile, it had been decided to send the Russian Baltic fleet half-way round the world to the Far East in a desperate attempt to relieve beleaguered Port Arthur.
It was during this epic voyage that the Russian warships became involved in a bizarre international incident which raised Russophobia in Britain to fever pitch and very nearly led to war between the two powers. As a result of faulty intelligence, nervousness and inexperience, Russian sailors opened fire in fog in the North Sea on a fleet of Hull trawlers, believing them, incredibly, to be Japanese torpedo boats. One was sunk, five others were hit, and there were a number of casualties. In the panic of the moment, the Russian warships even fired on one another. Then, convinced that they had successfully fought off a Japanese attack, they continued on their way. While London remonstrated angrily with St Petersburg over what became known as the Dogger Bank incident, four British cruisers shadowed the Russian fleet across the Bay of Biscay. Meanwhile a large British naval force was hastily got ready for action. There were anti-Russian demonstrations in Trafalgar Square and outside Downing Street, while Count Benckendorff was booed as he left his embassy. In the end an abject apology by Tsar Nicholas, and promises of generous compensation, cooled British tempers, and war was averted. It was an inauspicious start, however, to this great Russian relief expedition designed to save Port Arthur,
By now the savage land battle for the naval base had begun. The first Japanese attack was driven back with heavy loss. Two more followed, which were also repulsed. But gradually the Japanese troops closed in on the Russian positions, using sappers to tunnel beneath the defences, and observers in balloons to spot the garrison’s weaknesses. Moreover, the capture of a hill overlooking Port Arthur enabled the Japanese to direct a murderous artillery barrage against the defenders below. With nearly half the garrison either dead or wounded, and with little or no hope of relief reaching them in time, morale among the Russian rank and file had reached rock bottom. Although many of the officers still wanted to fight to the bitter end, the Governor, fearing a mutiny among the troops, decided to discuss surrender terms with the Japanese commander. On January 2, 1905, after a siege lasting 154 days, Port Arthur capitulated. Before doing so, the Governor sent a last message to Tsar Nicholas. ‘Great Sovereign, Forgive!’ it declared. ‘We have done all that was humanly possible. Judge us, but be merciful.’
The loss of the great eastern stronghold to the ‘yellow apes’ was an appalling blow to Russian prestige throughout the world, but particularly in Asia. However, it was merely the start of St Petersburg’s humiliation at the hands of the Japanese. On February 18 the biggest and bloodiest battle of the war began. The prize was the heavily defended railway centre of Mukden, today call Shenyang, which lay 250 miles north of Port Arthur. Russian military experts considered its defences virtually impenetrable. However, while the number of troops engaged on either side was roughly equal, around 300,000, the Japanese enjoyed a number of advantages. For a start, their troops had just won a resounding victory. Despite very heavy casualties, they were utterly determined to defeat the Russians, against whom they displayed a fanatical courage in close quarters combat with bayonet and grenade. No one questioned the bravery of the Russian troops, despite their recent defeat, but what counted in the end was the superiority of the Japanese commanders. In less than a month, after one of the longest and most savage battles of modern times, Mukden fell to the Japanese, although most of the Russian garrison managed to escape northwards. However, they left behind them 27,000 dead in what has been described as the most disastrous battle in Russian history. Yet their humiliation was still not over, though this time it was to be the turn of the navy.
News of the fall of Port Arthur and of Mukden reached the Russian Baltic fleet as it halted at Madagascar on its long voyage eastwards. The surrender of the former removed the main purpose of the expedition. Nonetheless it was decided to allow it to proceed, with the aim of winning back mastery of the seas from the Japanese, thereby preventing them from reinforcing or supplying their forces on the mainland. Shadowed from now on by Japanese agents, the armada finally entered the war zone in the middle of May. There Admiral Togo lay in wait for the weary Russians. On the morning of May 26, the two fleets met in the Tsushima Straits, which divide Japan from Korea. The outcome was catastrophic for the Russians. In the space of a few hours they suffered one of the worst defeats in naval history, losing eight battleships, four cruisers, five minelayers and three transports. Four more battleships were forced to surrender, while three cruisers which sought sanctuary in neutral ports were interned together with their crews. Nearly 5,000 Russian sailors perished. The Japanese lost just 3 torpedo boats and 110 lives. It was an astounding victory. St Petersburg’s humiliation was complete, and Tsar Nicholas’s dreams of building a great new empire in the East had been destroyed for ever.
To all intents and purposes, the war was over, although Russia, with its vast reserves of troops, was far from defeated. But the will to continue with this highly unpopular war was no longer there. Economic hardship, the succession of disasters on the battlefield and at sea, and general disillusionment with Tsar Nicholas’s autocratic rule had given birth to widespread political and social unrest at home. The government therefore needed all the troops it possessed to put down the rising tide of revolution which threatened the very throne. St Petersburg was not alone in wishing to end hostilities in the Far East. Despite their spectacular victories, the Japanese knew that they could not win a long drawn-out war against the Russian colossus, with its inexhaustible manpower. Already the war was imposing a critical strain on their resources which could not be sustained indefinitely.
Both governments were therefore grateful when the United States offered to act as mediator between them. As a result, on September 5, 1905, a peace treaty was signed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, between the warring powers. It effectively brought to an end Tsarist Russia’s forward policy in Asia. Under its terms both countries agreed to evacuate Manchuria, which was restored to Chinese rule. Port Arthur and its immediate hinterland, including control of the Russian-built railway, was transferred to Japan. Korea was declared to be independent, albeit within Japan’s sphere of influence. For their part, the Japanese were persuaded to drop their earlier demands for huge indemnities, while, apart from the south
ern half of Sakhalin Island which went to Japan, the Russians were not required to surrender any of their sovereign territory. Nevertheless St Petersburg had lost virtually everything it had gained in the region during ten years of vigorous military and diplomatic endeavour. The war, moreover, had exploded forever the myth of the white man’s superiority over Asiatic peoples.
But if the Japanese had blocked Russia’s last forward move in Asia, the Tibetans had signally failed to halt Britain in hers. In the summer of 1904, it will be recalled, Colonel Francis Younghusband had ridden unopposed into Lhasa at the head of a small army. However, if he and Lord Curzon, the Viceroy, had expected to find damning evidence of Russian intrigue there they were to be disappointed. Not only were there no arsenals of Russian weapons, no political advisers, no drill sergeants, but there was also no sign of any treaty of friendship between Tsar Nicholas and the Dalai Lama. Nonetheless, it does appear from other evidence that some sort of a promise may have been made by Nicholas, possibly through Dorjief, to the Dalai Lama whereby he would come to his assistance if the British ever invaded Tibet. This was claimed at the time by a senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official in conversation with the British ambassador to Peking, and later repeated in the memoirs, published after the Revolution, of a former Tsarist diplomat. If Nicholas did, in fact, give such an undertaking, it was very likely in the belief that Britain would never invade Tibet, and that therefore he would not be called upon to honour it.
The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia Page 57
