By the terms of the 1906 Anglo-Chinese Treaty, negotiated bilaterally in Peking without Tibetan involvement, the British government discarded everything the Younghusband invasion had achieved and formally returned Tibet to the Chinese orbit. A year later the Anglo-Russian Convention secured Russian recognition of Chinese suzerainty in Tibet in exchange for British acceptance of Russian domination of Mongolia. The Younghusband invasion had crushed the Tibetan army and left the nation defenseless even as it provoked the wrath of the Chinese and challenged them to exert their influence in a distant land they had long been content to ignore. The subsequent diplomatic betrayal of Tibet not only opened the door to Chinese aggression, it virtually obliged Peking to act.

The Chinese responded with an invasion force led by a notorious warlord, General Chao Erh-feng, who would become known throughout Tibet as Butcher Chao. A ruthless fighter who vowed to leave not a person or a dog alive, he marched his army through Batang and Derge, subduing all of eastern Tibet, leaving in his wake ravaged monasteries, devastated villages, and rivers stained with blood. Arriving at Bah in 1905, he murdered four monks. When word reached him that a neighbouring monastery at Lithang was restive, he summoned two Tibetan officials and when they confirmed the report, he promptly had them beheaded. When the people of the valley proved unruly he dispatched his troops and slaughtered 1, 210 monks and laymen. In June 1906 his forces surrounded the Gongkar Manling monastery, decapitated the four monks sent out to negotiate, and proceeded to kill and pillage, burning sacred texts, melting down for coinage the gold and copper icons, looting the temples, and reducing the sacred enclosures to ashes and dust. On the third day of the first Tibetan month of the Iron-Dog year, Butcher Chao and his army marched into Lhasa, blasted the Jokhang and Potala Palace with artillery fire, and looted the city, raping women and children and slaughtering any monk who resisted. By the end of February 1910 he had quelled resistance and taken control of the capital, leaving tens of thousands of Tibetans dead.

The Dalai Lama, having only returned from exile in China in December 1909, fled in advance of the Chinese armies to Phari, where the entire population of the Chumbi Valley rallied to his defense. He reached Yatung the following day, where he was sheltered by David Macdonald... That night while the Dalai Lama rested, Macdonald placed a guard at his door, and when, the following morning, Chinese officials appeared, demanding that the British hand over the revered lama, Macdonald had them seized and searched for weapons. Learning that a larger Chinese force would soon be descending upon Yatung, the Dalai Lama, disguised as a common postal runner, escaped in the night and with his entourage braved the ice and snow of the Jelep La to reach Gatong, the Sikkimese village nearest the frontier. There the Tibetan party found safety and rest in a telegraph hut, protected throughout the following night by two British soldiers. At daylight they continued to Kalimpong and beyond to Darjeeling, where a house was placed at the Dalai Lama's disposal by Charles Bell.

From: Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and The Conquest of Everest. Wade Davis

Courtesy of Ed Webster

George Mallory, upper left, and his team of Sherpas, photographed by John Noel, June 7, 1922.