Not, as I think, with any deliberate intention, but from sheer inanity, the signal had now been given. Other Tibetan shots immediately followed. Simultaneously volleys from our own troops rang out; the guns and Maxims commenced to fire. Tibetan swordsmen made a rush upon any within reach, and the plucky and enterprising Edmund Candler, the very able correspondent of the _Daily Mail_, received more than a dozen wounds, while Major Wallace Dunlop, one of the best officers in the force, was severely handled. For just one single instant the Tibetans, by a concerted and concentrated rush, might have broken our thin line, and have carried the Mission and the military staff. But that instant passed in a flash. Before a few seconds were over, rifles and guns were dealing the deadliest destruction on them in their huddled masses. The Lhasa General himself was killed at the start, and in a few minutes the whole affair was over. The plain was strewn with dead Tibetans, and our troops instinctively and without direct orders ceased firing—though, in fact, they had only fired thirteen rounds per man.
It was a terrible and ghastly business; but it was not fair for an English statesman to call it a massacre of “unarmed men,” for photographs testify that the Tibetans were all armed; and, looking back now, I do not see how it could possibly have been avoided. The Tibetans afterwards at Lhasa told me in all seriousness that I might have known their General did not mean to fight, for if he did he would not have been in the front as he was. This, no doubt, was true, and, left to himself, he would, we may be sure, have arranged matters with me in a perfectly amicable manner, for at Guru in January, and when he came to see me at Tuna, he had always shown himself courteous and reasonable; and his men had no antipathy towards us. But he had at his side, ruling and over-awing him, a fanatical Lama from Lhasa. Ignorant and arrogant, this priest herded the superstitious peasantry to destruction. It is only fair to assume that, somewhere in the depths of his nature, he felt that the people’s religion was in danger, and that he was called upon to preserve it. But blind fear of the danger which he believed threatened was so combined with overweening confidence, and there was such a lack of effort to avert the supposed danger by reasonable means, as might so easily have been done, that he simply brought disaster on his country, and, poor man, paid the penalty of his unreasonableness with his life. What to me is so sad is that now, when the Lamas have discovered their errors and are imploring our aid, we can do so little to befriend them.