They Asserted Their Right To Have The Supreme Voice In Nominating The Gyalpo, And They Soon Reduced That High Official, The Prime Minister Of Tibet, To The Position Of A Creature Of Their Own.

The policy was both astute and successful.

The Tibetans had welcomed the Chinese originally because they saved them from the Eleuth army, and provided a guarantee against a fresh invasion. But the long peace and the destruction of the Eleuth power had led the Tibetans to think less of the advantage of Chinese protection, and to pine for complete independence. The lamas also bitterly resented the assumption by the ambans of all practical authority. How long these feelings could have continued without an open outbreak must remain a matter of opinion; but an unexpected event brought into evidence the unwarlike character of the Tibetans, and showed that their country was exposed to many dangers from which only China's protection could preserve them. In Kanghi's time the danger had come from Ili; in the reign of Keen Lung it came from the side of Nepaul.

As a general rule the mighty chain of the Himalaya has effectually separated the peoples living north and south of it, and the instances in history are rare of any collision between them. Of all such collisions the most important was that which has now to be described as the main cause of the tightening of the hold of China upon Tibet. The mountain kingdom of Nepaul was equally independent of the British and the Mogul Empire of Delhi. It was ruled by three separate kings, until in the year 1769 the Goorkha chief Prithi Narayan established the supremacy of that warlike race. The Goorkhas cared nothing for trade, and their exactions resulted in the cessation of the commercial intercourse which had existed under the Nepaulese kings between India and Tibet. Their martial instincts led them to carry on raids into both Tibet and India. The Tibetans were unequal to the task of punishing or restraining them, and at last the Goorkhas were inspired with such confidence that they undertook the invasion of their country. It is said that the Goorkhas were encouraged to take this, step by the belief that the Chinese would not interfere, and that the lamaseries contained an incalculable amount of treasure. The Goorkhas invaded Tibet in 1791 with an army of less than 20,000 men, and, advancing through the Kirong and Kuti passes, overcame the frontier guards, and carried all before them up to the town of Degarehi, where they plundered the famous lamasery of Teshu Lumbo, the residence of the Teshu Lama. Having achieved this success and gratified their desire for plunder, the Goorkhas remained inactive for some weeks, and wasted much precious time. The Tibetans did not attempt a resistance, which their want of military skill and their natural cowardice would have rendered futile, but they sent express messengers to Pekin entreating the Chinese emperor to send an army to their assistance. Keen Lung had not sent troops to put a stop to the raids committed on the frontier by the Goorkhas; but when he heard that a portion of his dominions was invaded, and that the predominance of his country in the holy land of Buddhism was in danger, he at once ordered his generals to collect all the forces they could and to march without delay to expel the foreign invader.

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Words from 81757 to 82325 of 191255