Empire: World History - 89. The Final Act of the Great Game

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

Fearing Russian designs on the region, the eyes of the British turn towards Tibet. Francis Younghusband, the Victorian adventurer and elite player of the Great Game, and Lord Curzon decide that with the Russians distracted by their conflict in Manchuria, now is the time to seize the territory. This is their chance to one-up their imperial rival. In this classic tale of the Great Game, British and Russian officers face each other down in far-off mountain ranges, before things take a darker turn as a British expedition sets off a cycle of violence. In this episode dedicated to the memory of his biographer, Patrick French, listen as William and Anita discuss the extraordinary life of Francis Younghusband and his role in the final act of the Great Game. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durimple. We've got a really important subject to talk about, but I mean, partly because we have a great deal of regard. for the man who brought this particular subject to the world. So really we're dedicating this podcast to our dearly departed Patrick French friend,

a lifelong friend of yours, William. He was at school with me from the age of 13, was my best man at my wedding and made a speech that you would greatly have enjoyed Anita. I would have been tickled for it. He exposed every foible. I mean, it wasn't so much a best man's speech as a roast. I think that's not going too far. But anyway, the reason that we're discussing Patrick is not his very funny best man speech,

but the fact that at the same time, he was working on a spectacular book called Young Husband, The Last Great Imperial Adventurer. And this is a book that re-looked at one of the kind of classic Great Game heroes, Sir Francis Young Husband, who was involved in the final stages of the great game, which occurred after Russia seized much of Central Asia and made this extraordinary sweep down a thousand miles from the Orenberg line and captured one after another of the sultanates that now make up the stance. The Great Game had a sort of second lease of life. And again, you get this thing that you get before the first Afghan war of British spies

and British explorers meeting Russian spies and Russian explorers in the borderlands around Afghanistan, Western China, Xinjiang, and in Tibet. And this episode takes the story forward through the person of Sir France's young husband who'd previously been given a biography by Peter Fleming, the brother of Ian Fleming, who created James Bond, that made him out to be this sort of embodiment of Victorian valour and brilliance. In fact, as Patrick showed, he was an extraordinarily the weird character who was a whole variety of things. In fact, the book opens with this paragraph. A wide variety of Sir France's young husbands were to be found in the archives. He was a journalist, spy, geographer, writer, staunch imperialist, Indian nationalist, philosopher and explorer. His friends

range from Sir Henry Newbolt to Sri Pothet Swami. Peter Fleming praised him as a thruster. Kevin Mason judged him the father of the Caracorum expedition, while Peter Hopker considered him a member of the Great Game Elite, whose exploits thrilled a whole generation of Englishman. He was, according to taste, a promoter of a religion of atheism, Bertrand Russell, a devout Christian, D&B, a prophet of the Antichrist himself, the tablet, which is the Catholic magazine. And they know their antichrist.

A visionary, of rare radiance, barren parmesan. to the Herald Tribune, who was nothing less than a legendary hero, but he was a complete weirdo. And by the end, he started having mystical visions, writing books about aliens going telepathic. Why are you doing by the end? What are you, why are you doing? Before you just, before you blow the entire keg of TNT, right at the beginning, can we just take a moment longer to talk about Patrick himself? Absolutely. So Patrick very tragically died of cancer this year. It was a long battle he had against it. He was the most extraordinary, I mean, I think you're twinkly-eyed, but he was a very twinkly-eyed his story. He was a very twinkly and naughty boy in all sorts of

ways. Nauty and gossipy and hilarious. And I first came across him so many years ago when he brought out liberty or death. And I was interviewing him in a shed in Northolt. But I don't only just recently bought a car. And I was a spectacularly bad driver. And he was my first experiment. I had to drop him to station. You knew Patrick, but long before you knew me then. I did. I knew him. In fact, he got me switched on to your work.

And in this sort of very gossipy trip as he was gripping the dashboard, that you never see another day praying to people in the tablet. He was telling me about, oh, William Dalrymport and how I would very much enjoy, you know, his work. And that's how you actually came into my conscience. And I know it's hard to believe that people aren't born with you in their consciousness, but it was Patrick. Patrick Crinch, who was the bridge. So Patrick's young husband, which is very much the template we're going to use for today's episode, is a book he wrote at the age, I think, of about 23.

He came to live with me in Delhi when he was working in the archives here. We travelled all over Hematial Pradesh and young husband's footsteps. And we were both writing books in, I was just over the Somerset border. He was in Wiltshire. in 1993 to four when he was editing this. We edited each other's text. And it's just incredibly sad that he's no longer here. But I think just rereading this book this week just brought back,

what a talent. What an amazing writer, how funny, how perceptive. Yeah, and you can hear his voice again when you reread. It's very much in his voice, isn't it? It's so much in his voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So last week we told you all to read Tolstoy and Game of three live, I'm afraid, this time.

one who has not read young husband the last great imperial venture is missing the best book of nonfiction by anyone of my generation it's a wonderful it is a real real tale of daring do anyway patrick much missed by people who knew him so so well like you and people who knew him and really liked the time that we had which was not much but you know a really good guy anyway let's talk about france this young husband so he was born on the northwest frontier of british india in may 1863 his dad was a veteran of the first Afghan war, later lieutenant of police in Upper Sindh. His mother, Clara Jane, was from a moderately rich. I mean, they weren't poor, but they weren't filthy rich, aristos. It was an evangelical family, as you were saying in Somerset. And his parents moved to India at the close of the Crimean War,

just as the East India Company in India was reaching breaking point. Francis's father was actually engaged in suppressing the Great Uprising, the Indian Mutiny, whatever you want to call it, of 1857, and two of his uncles were killed in the fighting. So you get an idea of what is wound in this man's DNA. I mean, this is the thing that we often forget is that whole generations of Brits were born in India. And there were these imperial families, as they called themselves, who generation after generation used to send their kids out to India. and who inherited in their blood this whole world. And as a result, young husband grew up unquestioningly confident in his racial superiority. He was the embodiment of Victorian self-confidence, casual racism, militarism,

but also had this thing that you see in Kipling, which is a sort of bonkers-Dwardian mysticism, which grows as his life continues. And we'll end with the very, very extraordinary end of the story, which, of course, I won't spoil by previewing. Are you sure you won't? Are you sure you? I'm very happy to if you won't be doing. No, it is literally because I cattle prodigy away from it, but you haven't already, frankly.

But, you know, like so many of that era, you know, families who had settled in India, who were living in these enclaves of superiority, as William sort of describes them, they thought the best place to educate their children was back at home. So you have this sort of, you know, generation after generation of little boys and little girls who are sent on these long voyages back to England to get an education. And her husband is an almost direct contemporary of Kipling, who writes this wonderful short story called Baba Black Sheep about the sheer horror and weirdness of being sent from a warm, loving home

in lovely warm climate of India, back to the cold misery and horrors of an adopted family in England. And Baba Black Sheep, anyone that doubts Kipling's ability to write should read that. It's from the most moving stories of childhood. I will go back and read that. You in particular would love it about a little boy lost in a completely strange world. Everything is foreign to him. He doesn't know anything about England when he arrives.

He clings to the radiators and this horrible punishment, corporal punishment by his adopted family. Yeah, I mean, it's something. It's a sort of a thing that happens. I mean, it's funny you should say Kipling because I think that young husband looks so much like Kipling. You see the photographs of him. You know, when you put those two faces together, they are very, very similar. look him up. They look alike. They're the same generation. They have the same views of empire. And then they have the same weird spirituality in mysticism. Yes, which of course you're not going

to blow because you wouldn't blow the ending because that's not who you are. No. I mean, the other thing I was going to say is that, you know, he was sent to Britain's snorting. It's a podcast, snort. So do you want to tell you on? I do you want to snort in the face of my admonishment, young man? But he was sent to Britain age 12 to be educated. at Clifton College in Bristol. And at 18, he enrols at Sandhurst. Again, this is a trajectory that so many have known, including, by the way, you were talking about pupils' accounts of their being sent back. It spans decades because you have General Dyer, who is involved in the Genoa La Barg massacre, who's sent back to Ireland to study at Middleton College and has a dreadful time and hates every

second of it and is longing to get back to his homeland, which is in his head, India, but he means British India. And even as late as, do you remember the great, great figure of Anne Leslie, you know, a really iconic person in Fleet Street? She was born in Karachi. And she still, you know, right till the end, I used to sort of, you know, interview her. And she would say that, you know, that was home. And that, you know, every time she was sent back to England and when she's all settled in England, she always felt that she was on some kind of never-ending detention, that there was a punishment from being away from everything that she loved. Anyway, so he goes through Sandhurst. He does very, very well at Sandhurst. He passes through the Academy with honours.

Because he's a kind of classic late Victorian athlete, he runs the dash quicker than anyone else. And before long, he has been sent off to northern Afghanistan, where he is the other side of the border, just as the Russians are rolling up Merv, the last of the Central Asian carnates that we dealt with in the Russian Central Asian episode. And what you see in the early life of young husband is exactly what we were talking about in that episode, the way that the British are convinced against all the evidence that the Russians are about to counter down the Khyber Pass. And it is young husband and his fellow similar intelligences, as they call themselves, the intelligent department in the imperial headquarters at Simla, in the Himalayas,

who send young men up into the Himalayas and the Pamirs and the Karakorums with more mapping equipment. Young husband's first job is to find potential campsites for armies in Afghanistan, as similar fears, the British are going to reinvade Afghanistan or certainly cross over Afghanistan to fight the Russians on the oxes. And this is an early letter, just to give you the tone of young husband's language, writing to his sister, everything is perfectly prepared out here. We have thoroughly good men at the head,

and if we don't give those Russians the jolliest hiding they've had for some time, I will eat my hat. Now, that's your husband out and out, sitting in the hills of northern Afghanistan, waiting with a spyglass for the sign of the Russians and the Russian flags crossing over.

And he gets sent off on a whole variety of expeditions, and in fact, the first half of his career is trying to outflank the Russians not only in Afghanistan, but in places like Manchuria, where the Russians are also expected to move south into, and as we'll see later in the second half of this episode, in Tibet. I mean, the thing about young husband and what makes him, I mean, sort of of a breed, but also one of those people who is sort of one of the special ones, the British would have thought, is that he was such a master of disguise. He was never sort of overtly doing the thing

that he was doing, William. He was always pretending to be something. else? Tell us a bit more about that. Well, the Brits loved to think that they were masters of disguise and were put on all sorts of sort of funny hats and tablets and assumed that no one can see immediately by the way they walked by the bristliness of their moustache or by their skin color or eye color, that they were, of course, British men in disguise looking completely out of place. Young husband was convinced that his disguises were perfect, and he was sent off under a variety of guises on shooting expeditions, on shooting breaks, on trekking experiments.

on trekking expeditions and so on, when actually his role was to map and to observe and to find Russian parties. Often the intelligence departments and similar, where they couldn't get Brits, they'd train up men dressed as Buddhist monks with sort of measuring rods in their prayer wheels or their staffs and with extraordinary, even mercury pushed into a cowrie shell and plugged in by wax to get a false horizon for mapping. I mean, kind of stuff that sounds bonkers. It's amazing. That's an amazing fact.

And young husband loves all this. He hates being a cavalry soldier in the plains of India. He's longing to be striding through Central Asia. And he creates his own opportunities. Well, he creates his own opportunities, but also he has this unwavering belief that he is Superman. He can do anything. So, you know, on the way back from this tour of Manchuria, he is ordered because also, you know, his London superiors think, Okay, yeah, he's something.

He's just nuts enough to do the things that others won't do. So he's ordered to try the mustach, which is a 19,000 foot pass across the side of K2. Okay, it's a really treacherous, craggy death trap is what it is. And what's more, it's been covered by an avalanche for 25 years. It's never been crossed by a European. Young husband says when he gets this order, not what the hell are you talking about. That's just nuts. he goes, yes, okay, and he reaches the summit.

But when he does reach the rest of the summit, he finds the past has been destroyed. So that argument that maybe the Russians could come over this area. I mean, that's why they want him to go and have a look and see whether it's a way in. I should say, Patrick was staying with me in Delhi when he went off to cross the Mustang himself. Well, he's another nutcase. Well, no, because having read all these Victorian accounts, you know, he imagined he'd be going where no man had gone before and this sort of thing. It turned out to be about an hour's bus ride outside Manali today. He must be so disappointed.

Full of sort of shop-selling momos. Israelis on their year off. Oh, his little face. Having raves and stuff. It wasn't quite much. He must have been crushed. Well, look, around the same time as he's sort of, you know, climbing up mountains that ought not to be climbed because they're just very, very dangerous.

By the way, his descent down that, Mustar became the stuff of legend. It was a six-hour descent. no bus ride to Manali in those days, six-hour descent down a sheer cliff face of ice. So it's like climbing down glass. And then, you know, he does that. And then he has to travel down through the largest glacier in the world. But then he pops up again, say he's not much to report. No one's coming that way.

All safe or fine. But sort of around the same time in June 1889, there are raiders from Hunza who, in the Parmere Mountains, which are this very spectacular range of mountains. As you fly to India, actually, my flight was diverted. Last time I came to JLF, there was some snafu going on. And we had a very long holding pattern over the Parmirs. And I've never noticed how very beautiful and serene they are. Today, Hunza is, three quarters the way up the Karakoram Highway.

And again, you can get there today quite easily from Islamabad in the kind of day and a half of driving. But in those days, it was very, very remote. There were only sort of ledges along precipices to clamber along, certainly no motorable roads. and young husband went there, having heard not only that raiders from Hunza were attacking British territory, but that Russian soldiers had been spotted in this area. And we have, I suppose, given the impression in this series that a lot of the great game was British imagination that this threat of a Russian invasion was in their heads. But not once, but on three or four occasions, young husband, in fact, at this period in his career,

actually does come across Russians who are either mapping the areas themselves, or are in one case threatening to actually raise the Russian flag in territory that is owned by international agreement by Afghanistan. Again, this is like one of the things when we did The Tale of Two Spies. He comes across a man called Gromchevsky, who invites him to visit, you know, invites him to come around to his camp and have a cup of tea while he chats to him. I think it's actually the first time since that story, since the first Africa Moore, that you actually have two players of the great game meeting and, of course,

finding they have everything in common. So Gromchewski, though, is a liar, liar pants on fire because he does tell young husband, I suppose this is sort of like, you know, another facet of the great games, it's all misinformation, that there are some 500,000 Russian soldiers who are ready and waiting and poised at any moment to invade India. It's nonsense. We should say that it's not true. But young husband then gets his own back, despite eating each other's dinners and

and a young husband complimenting Gromchevsky on the quality of his stews and wondering why native cooks can never get the flavour in the way that the Russians do and all the sort of thing. Despite all that, he sends Gromchevsky over the mountains by a route he knows does not exist. And when they meet again, Gromchevsky's on crutches a year later. Terrible frostbite? No, and half his party have died from exposure. What larks? What larks there were in the great game which made people lose limbs and lots of life?

Particularly if they're porters and count followers, exactly. So, you know, that's, again, the difference between interpretation of what was going on at this time. You know, to some, it was a game. These were two players playing chess. But the human cost for both of these men is huge. Even though at this stage in the story that you have this strange dichotomy in young husbands' outlook, because on one hand, he's using all his Victorian language. He talks about wanting to beard the mere of Hunza.

And there's a whole moment when he blames in his written account of an expedition, the fact that the whole party are nearly exposed to danger because one of his men has the wits of a hog, as he puts it, in Victorian language. In actual fact, it's clear from young husband's own diary that the error that was made was made by a young husband himself as well he knows. So he's sort of whitewashing himself in his own account and blaming everything on his Indian porters and guides. What does it mean to beard someone? I'm always frightened to ask, but what does it mean your bearding? I think it means to sort of grab someone by their beard and give them a good talking to is the Victorian. Is that what it is? I didn't know. I thought it would be much worse than that. According to the rules of this podcast, things normally are worse than you think. Anyway. So after this, young husband is sent to Kashkar in Xinjiang in Western China, these Uyghur territories.

And there you have a long face off again with the Russians because there is a British consul whose name is George McCartney who is in fact half Chinese and has very good grasp of not only the language but also Chinese culture since his mother was indeed Chinese. And the Russian consul who's called Petrovsky. And when I first went to Kashgar in 1986, these two concerts had just been turned into backpacker hotels. and I stayed in the British consulate, which was called Chinnebag, and I know that Patrick stayed in the former Russian consulate where Petrovsky was based. And again, you had this sort of face-off. These were territories whose borders were often open to negotiation, and you have young husband on one side trying to mislead and spy on the Russians.

And the Russians, with rather more success, are having all the British post opened, read, copied, set to say Petersburg, and then forwarded on. So the great game is sometimes made out to be something that almost as if it didn't actually happen. And it's just the invention of a lot of boys' own historians. But, you know, there are these constant clashes of rival consuls, rival military expeditions who bump up against each other. So a year after this Kashgar experience, young husband finds himself in a place where he almost starts war with Russia potentially. So he goes to find the Parmia Gap, which is, you know, in this mountain range that we were talking about, a potential. Russian route into India. This is what the paranoia has always been, that there are tunneling Russians

trying to get into India and take what is Britons or the Raj is. There is this slice of land called the Wakhan Corridor, which is still there and still today abuts Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and I think Uzbekistan. And in those days, abutted the Raj, China and Russia. And this is territory that the Russians want to claim, and they actually send expeditions in with flags to try and claim this territory before it's demarcated as belonging to the Afghans. And young husband rides in and comes across another Russian great gamer called Yanov. So when he meets Yanov, is it a similar kind of come over to my camp while I scare you to death over tea? Is that what happens? No, this time, young husband sends, as he says, a runner with his visiting card to Yanof and invites

him to his tent. And Yanov does come around bringing some vodka and two different kinds of wine and brandy, which young husband is very pleased by. And they have this very sort of collegiate night and they show each other their maps and they talk very friendly to each other. And then the following night, young husband is just getting ready for bed. He said, I've just put on my pajamas with the sound of hooves outside my tent. So I quickly put on my great coat. And there is Yanov again, very embarrassing. I'm very sorry, but I've just had instructions. from my commander-in-chief to expel you. And young husband says, well, that's not very good.

Well, expel me from where? Because also, yeah, it's not yours to expel me from. That's exactly what he says. And this guy's carrying a Russian flag. And he says, actually, it is Russian territory. And look, here are my Cossacks to underline the point. There's a detachment of Cossacks behind him. And the young husband replies, you have 30 Cossacks and I have none, so I will have to leave,

but I will make a formal diplomatic complaint. However, would you like to stay for supper? And so the two have another boozy night together. And the following morning, when young husband's packing up, Yanov sends around a haunch of venison for young husband to take on his expedition back to England. So this does become a major diplomatic incident. But how does it not end up in war? Because if you start claiming territory that isn't yours,

you know, you stick your flag in various different places and say, this is mine. You know, wars have been started for less than that. How is it averted this time around? So at this point, the British government in London don't want to have a war breaking out over some territory that they don't even know where it is. When news of this diplomatic incident appears in Whitehall, the first telegram says, where is Bozai Gumbaz? They then get on their high horse and say, Bozai Gumbas is the Gibraltar of Central Asia. It has long been known to be part of Afghanistan. And both sides back off.

And this is the point at which the Russians and the British firmly demarcate. the border. In the end, the British point is proven. It is Afghan territory. It's not Russian territory. And the great game is put on hold. This, in the sense, is the last moment the two will meet against each other, because both of them are now teeing up for the First World War, where they will be on the same side. And they both begin to worry more about Western Europe than they do about the great game. But it is, you're right. It's an extremely tense moment. young husband very nearly causes a war to the enormous irritation of his paymasters in London. So, I mean, there follows a little hiatus then, but he fills time.

He's not a man to hang about his young husband because in 1897 he gets married. Yay for young husband. But, you know, being as slightly, as William sort of blew the gaff right at the beginning, slightly weird, he also finds a very weird woman to marry, may I say. She's older than him. she has a horror of physical intimacy, which prompts her to say, do you know this? She says to him, we shall have a happier union if all that perfectly natural but lower part is eliminated from it.

Yes, the young husband, as you can imagine, is not very pleased. No lower parts. No, as we would say, you know, the youngans would say, no bump in uglies, but we will be married and all of that would be fine, but we're not doing any of the mucky stuff. No, he's not happy. And also, it doesn't really work because I think she's pregnant by the end of moon. So, you know, that doesn't really work out. But it is an odd relationship, a very old relationship, isn't it? And as we'll see at the end, there is a different ending to the story of

young husband's love life. Again, one of the weird bits of the story, but we won't anticipate it out. And then we have the next phase of this extraordinary life. Join us after the break when we bring you young husband and a Tibet expedition. My name is George Nathaniel Curzon. I am a most superior. person. Now, that famous piece of doggerel was invented about Lord Curzon, the British Viceroy and future Foreign Secretary when he was at Oxford. And Curzon is a figure that dominates the next half of this story because he is sent out very young to become the viceroy, and he shares with young husband this complete terror and paranoia about the Russians conquering India. And Curzon

has travelled in all these regions as young husband has done. And he knows where the Russians are and he considers himself to be a great expert on the great game. Can we just say a little bit more about Kersen, a little pen portrait of Kersen, because I mean, that dog will tell you a little something of what his contemporaries thought of him at university. But, you know, accounts do paint a picture of a rather priggish, proper, you know, believing in his own racial superiority, sure. But what what it doesn't tell you is that this is a man who is constantly in pain. He wore a back brace for most of his life, he suffered from extraordinary sciatic pain, which put him in an absolute foul temper most of the time, fastidious about diet and concerned with all sorts of remedies for this terrible

back pain. He is also the man who famously would go on to partition Bengal when he was a viceroy of India. So in India, his name is very, very well known and not in not described in the most glowing terms either. But this is a man with whom young husband finds some kind of sort of almost spiritual communion, that they both believe in this greater mission for Britain in India and also in the rest of the region. There are some redeeming aspects to Cousin, such as the fact that he founded the Archaeological Survey of India, which has looked after India's ancient monuments very well ever since. But he is the same generation as young husband, has the same racial ideas. And in particular, he shares young husband's paranoia about the Russians. And so the two of them

make a very potent force. And incidentally, at every stage, you see their push for maximising British influence in the Himalayas, rubbing up against the caution of their bosses in London, with whom they're now in telegraphic contact. So any ideas that the, that the Viceroy has, has to be pushed through the Foreign Office and Downing Street. It's not like the days of Lord Wellesley, where he'd have six months to get on with his own work before he got an answer from London. Now the telegram can come back overnight. And so this is a very different period. And young husband and cousin rub up against the British government at home.

But they find strength in each other. They find strength together. And they have this unified voice saying, you know what? The next place to watch out for is Tibet. The Himalayas. The Tibet and the Himalays have got to secure those places or the Russians are coming. The Russians are coming. And we should talk about what Tibet was like in those days.

The Tibetan government was headed by the Dalai Lama. And he had barred any European from entering his realm since 17. The British had tried many times to get round that kind of barrier that he'd placed. But Tibet's isolationism was a cause of great suspicion. Like, why are they keeping us out? Why can't we send an MSO? Why can't we send a horse? Normally if you send a big horse, people let us sit.

They like a big horse and a carriage, but he's having none of it. So tell me, how do they respond then? I mean, this is the kind of paranoia. If you don't know what's beyond the curtain, whatever Kersen and young husband are saying, has a lot of traction, doesn't it, with the big cheeses in London? Well, what really sets them off are these rumours that the Dalai Lama has sent a special envoy called Ag van D'Ogev to Tsar Nicholas II in 1901 to discuss the secret treaty? Now, there are elements of truth about this.

The Dalai Lama has sent an ambassador to Russia, which is his perfect right. It's not true that the two are discussing a secret treaty or about to turn Tibetan. into a Russian protectorate or that the Cossacks are about to charge into Lassa. All that is complete nonsense. But these rumors about monks disguised as spies or envoys, again, play onto every sort of Edwardian neurosis. And Curzon orders young husband to go and establish British relations with the Dalai Lama. and London is continually putting small print behind this saying this is not to be an invasion,

this is to be a diplomatic expedition, this is to define the frontier, to confirm that the Tibetans are not opening military or relations with Russia that are more than diplomatic. But Kersen and young husband use this as an excuse to march in with troops. Well, but to be fair, I mean, Kersen can turn round to London and say, you know what, I've sent numerous letters, and he does, he sends numerous letters to the Dalai Lama, saying, you know, hello, can we be friends? And they're all returned unopened. So he can legitimately say that all my efforts establishing any kind of diplomatic bridge in Lhasa is failing. And when news comes from the ambassador in St. Petersburg that the Dalai Lama's envoy has arrived at the Russian court and been received

by Nicholas II. The contrast between these two things looks very suspicious to Kurson. So in 1903, Kersen tells young husband that he wants him to go to Tibet. At the time, you know,

the foreign department in India seems now to have completely bought into the Kersen argument that this is now so dangerous we need to step in. In May 1903, a man called Louis Dane, who also, you know,

I've come across in another story. He's, Louis Dane is one of those people who is at the hall in Westminster where Utham Singh will open fire. I mean, he's one of the people that he's trying to kill. So Louis Dane writes to Kersen and says, the Tibetan nettle has to be grasped. Henceforth, they must look to us for protection and support

and place no reliance on distant powers like China and Russia. We shall never get such a chance again. And so that's it. All impediment is removed. They're going in. And what does that look like? into Tibet, what does that look like? Well, it looks like something very different from what London had in mind. London was envisaging a young husband going off with maybe a few aids and discussing borders

and diplomatic relations with the Dalai Lama's representatives. Instead, Curzon sends him off with an army and with a train of attendance and packing that makes the first Afghan war look like amateurs. And one of Patrick's favourite finds in the course of researching his book, and I I'm going to have to read this out in full, is when he discovered young husband's packing list, all the things he was going to. Tremendous. Yes, we like a packing list. This is a quote from Patrick's young husband.

Young husband was not especially attached to material possessions. They were simply the props he needed when acting as representative of British India on a diplomatic mission. But to me, Patrick writes, the list symbolised the epic grandeur of the empire to Zenith, absurdly theatrical, its overblown Edwardian magnificence. Young husband's collection included white shirts, 15, flannel shirts, 12, twill shirts, 19, silk shirts, one, coloured stiff shirts, 12, colored smooth shirts, eight. Full red dress coat and trousers, morning coat and grey trousers, mess coat and waistcoat, Asam silk coat and waistcoat, white evening waistcoat, light flannel suit,

Norfolk beaches. An assortment of coats was also thought useful, though he had to make sure that there was the appropriate one for each and every occasion, including an old Ulster, two Jaeger coats, two khaki coats, a great coat, a long covered coat, a chesterfield coat, a long pistine long coat, a fur coat, a Chinese fur coat, a waterproof coat. His head, meanwhile, had to be kept covered, so there was a shikar hat, a thin solotopy, a thick solotopy, a khaki helmet, two forage caps, a brown felt hat, a white helmet, a white Panama. Then Patrick writes, I found the kit list became a source of endless speculation. It certainly gave a whole new meaning to the idea of a laundry list biography.

Why did young husband decide on 67 shirts? Would 66 have been too few? Did he ever find occasion to wear the silk Assam coat, or was the weather too cold? When should a shikar hat be worn answer when shooting Chinese partridges in the Chumby Valley? there were two particular items on the list which never ceased to excite me, a cocked hat and a campaign bath. Did the cocked hat survive the journey? Yes, I later found a photograph of young husband wearing it in Lhasa. But where did he find time to use the bath?

These were the questions I puzzled over in Darjeeling, he writes. I mean, it's beautiful and it is quite the most bonkers. Not since Lady Sale, have we been so dazzled with an accoutrement list. But it does explain why they needed some 10,000 coolies. to accompany this expedition. So again, you know, so the unseen people, 10,000 Indians who are carrying all this crap. God, I'm just so much crap.

But anyway, so that's the expedition into war. That's how you go to war in those days. The expedition, though, it does stall in its early stages. They get stuck at an area called tuna. Not to be confused with the tinned fish. Oh, thank God you're here, because that's what it was. Thank God. just in case you're about to make the error.

I know millions of people have just been saved from a really embarrassing mistake. Thank you. Thanks. Anyway, the young husband is sort of like flitting back or forth with the Tibetan generals. And, you know, he's trying to, you know, insist that this is Russia. You know, you're being controlled by Russia. Russia is there. You cannot stop talking to Russia. Don't be friends with Russia.

Be friends with us. But they're not having it. And in March 1904, the expedition sort of continues to advance into Tibet because nobody is satisfied. Young husband is not satisfied with the answers that he's receiving. They're categorical denials that they're being puppeted by Russia. He thinks is just proof positive that they're being puppeted by Russia. And so they arrived in a place called Guru where Tibetan forces have encamped. And this is meant to be the last ditch attempt to stop any kind of conflict, a parley,

that will save thousands of lives. So it doesn't go well, does it, William? No, and this is one of those moments when the humour and the comedy of some of these moments of Victoria and Edwardian history give way to sheer horror. Because as with the Russian attacks on Central Asia, you're dealing with people whose weaponry is sort of 200 years apart.

The Tibetans all have matchlocks with fuses. Young husband asks as a guarantee of good faith, the Vedicomers that the Tibetans should extinguish those fuses, only for, according to Tibetan sources, the British to open fire with machine guns. And the slaughter is immense. Lieutenant Haddo, who's a commander of a maxim gun attachment, that's one of the first really effective Bren guns, wrote, I got so sick of the slaughter that I ceased fire, though the general's order was to make as big a bag as possible. I hope I shall never have to shoot down men walking away from me again. The British lost no men, only 12 wounded, but the Tibetans in this very short

space of time lost 628 soldiers with 222 more wounded. And these soldiers, we should say, a warrior monks. So they're not even sort of straightforward soldiers. They believe in fighting with incantations and this sort of thing. So it's a completely one-sided massacre. Yeah, I mean, young husband claims that, you know, the Tibetans started it, but, you know, as Patrick who poured over all the source material, finds that account very doubtful, and especially when you've got the kind of reportage or kind of account left by Lieutenant Haddo to lean back on. Anyway, even in Britain.

So, Britain, there's a really mixed response to this massacre. I can call it a massacre, I think. There's a horrible jingoistic paper in India called the Overland Mail, which sits there writing a thrashing or a drastic beating operates as a wholesome lesson and earns respect from the natives, which is a necessary foundation to the establishment of lasting

friendly relations. But there are other voices, though, who are saying, this is not what Britain does, this is not what Britain should be. But on May 5th, 1904, the Tibetans decide they're going to do something in retaliation. So hundreds

of Tibetan soldiers attempt to storm a camp at a place called Changlo. and they arrive before dawn. The British forces have been caught on the hop, but then very quickly because they have this superior firepower. And just, you know, their forces are now well versed in this territory. They regain their composure. They kill at least 200 Tibetans.

And young husband at this point is shaken by the experience of all of this. But it does prove to him the thing that he said all along that Tibetans are treacherous, that they are just out waiting to kill us. You know, as the sun rises, they're waiting to cut our throats. And this kind of, you know, conflates with a point in his life where he is, is he becoming more unpredictable, would you say, more reckless, certainly, wouldn't you, William? I mean, what is what is going on? His mental state is certainly undergoing some kind of tectonic shift, isn't it?

Well, I mean, the old view of young husband was that he basically has a sort of nervous breakdown in Tibet from which he never recovers and he goes bonkers in the second half of his life. but Patrick rejects that. He says that there were always these two figures within Young Husband that was the militant imperialist, but there was also the kind of evangelical spiritualist and mystic. And what happens now is that Young Husband calls on further troops, their scent, and he marches through Tibet in Tulasa. And on the way, when they pass through towns, and this was the story Patrick he used to love telling, the Tibetans would line the streets and clap. Now, young husband would ride through waving merrily at this, imagining that they were welcoming him and were longing for a

British army to come. In fact, he discovers later that clapping is how Tibetans expel demons. And so what they were actually doing was trying to exercise these horrible British spirits. And when young husband finally gets to Lhasa, they find it completely deserted. Everyone's left. There are animals scrounging through the refuge and pools of stagnant water. and what's even more embarrassing for young husband is there's not the slightest evidence of any Russian involvement in the city. All sorts of stories have been flying around that there are Cossack regiments and cavalry and all manner of Russian arms dumps in Lassar. It's complete nonsense. And so the whole expedition has been mounted on an entirely false basis.

It's a huge intelligence error and an embarrassment. London is furious with both Kurson and Young Husband. What they had authorized was a diplomatic mission. Instead, what's happened is they've had a terrible massacre, thousands have been killed with Maxim guns, and they order young husband out. So this takes us to 1907 and the Anglo-Russian convention. And it's only then, William, that Tibet's status is clarified. This is a really important chapter because it does in many ways mark the end of the great game, doesn't it? It does. And of course, we've got to keep in mind the date too, because 1907, when this is negotiated, is to, years after 1905 when the Japanese have sunk the Russian Navy. So already the kind of great age,

the high watermark of European power over Asia has been and gone. Asia is now on the rise. And in retrospect, this is an unnecessary treaty because Russian and British power will soon contract away from this point. And we're also careering towards the First World War. And, you know, this young husband expedition becomes, you know, the last great adventure of the Victorian age, that things now will change. They will never be the same again. Patrick French puts it really beautifully. It's a sort of random epic grandeur which belied its historical insignificance, the trail of misconceptions and misunderstandings between civil and military hawks and doves, Shimla and Whitehall, British and Tibetans, and the mission's ultimate failure to achieve anything of lasting substance,

embodies the British Empire at its overstretched zenith. I mean, that's a powerful piece of writing. This was written, we should say, when Patrick, I think was 23. Extraordinary. Before they go out, young husband has this important moment of sort of spiritual ecstasy when he's climbing up a mountain, and suddenly he thinks that God is talking to him and that he is to be God's envoy. And so by the time he gets back to similar, everyone is even more suspicious of young

husband than they have been before, because he's now sort of spouting all this stuff about being the channel of God and understanding the true nature of spiritualism. And it's not a Christian God. I mean, it is not, at this point, he's sort of reframing everything. So it is, it is, he talks about things like a life force or, you know, sort of this mystical force that controls all humanity that runs through all humanity. It's basically for the ears of the time, and maybe even now, it sounds, you know, hippie-dippy to a lot of people who start wondering what on earth has gone wrong with young husbands. You know, what is happening to young husband? Well, as always happens in our podcast, all these different worlds overlap.

And one of the books that young husband reads in the course of his spiritual quest is Tolstoy's book, The Kingdom of God is within you. Oh, this is such a great. And he does it in a day, doesn't he like Gandhi does in a day? He just sort of, you know, doesn't he have a terrible accident, young husband, when he sort of falls off something. and then he's sort of lying in a stupor and he reads the book in a day. Exactly. He falls a horse. He's. Yep, exactly that.

And from the 1910s onwards, young husband devotes his life to an increasingly idiosyncratic mysticism. And he begins to write books like within thoughts during convalescence, which outlines his theories of an inherent impulse or world spirit that drove humanity. He also prophesied a new age of liberation on earth based on free love, where humans would communicate with aliens of our telepathy. I'm not making yourself. And the arrival of a new spiritual leader called the Godchild.

And he sends copies of the book to no less than Bertrand Russell, with whom he then sparks up a friendship. Does Bertram Russell think he's an intellectual equal? Or who is this potty man who keeps writing to me? I think more the latter than the former. Yeah. I think it's fair to say. Why is this nutcase writing to me all the time?

Yeah. But among the things that happen. And now this is a story I know you want to tell. Anita, is he creates a new song for his patriotic mystical movement. Yes. Okay, so, I mean, he thinks about the world in terms of spiritual conflict now. He talks about a holy war constantly. And this phrase comes up, the fight for right.

The spirit of the people, he believes, should respond to music, speech and song. And this movement, which, you know, ostensibly because it talks about all religions and all devotion to this great one spirit, it seems to transcend race and everything else. But there's more to it than that, because the people who are drawn to it aren't often sort of racially tolerant. But he does send, or he is the centre of a rather extraordinary nexus that produces one of the most well-known and stirring pieces of music

that Britain is produced to this day. And that is Jerusalem. So, you know, a supporter of his movement, and Michael Robert Bridges sends Hubert Parry, who is at the Royal College of Music, and is a composer of great note at the time, a copy of William Blake's Milton. Blake being someone who is just as bonkers as young husband

and who also thinks God is speaking directly to him every day. Yes. Through the kitchen window? So is it really through the kitchen window that I was not aware of? But, okay. But Jerusalem is the thing that really stir, the words, the stanzas of Jerusalem are the ones that they envisage are going to be a clarion call.

for people to come to this movement. So Parry sets about writing a piece of music to a company, Jerusalem, and Elgar will eventually end up doing the arrangement for this piece of music. And it is exactly everything that young husband would want it to be. It is a magnet to, you know, fluttering souls who are looking for greater meaning. Except when Parry discovers that it's being used for his movement, eventually will say, I don't want to have anything to do with this and he'll withdraw it. He'll just say, you know, repudiate the whole thing.

But that is how that great patriotic end of the proms, Jerusalem, comes to us. Courtesy, I mean, go straight back to Young Husband over this. So he is the commissioner. He commissions this. He's the man responsible. And every time you sing that him, you know, think of young husband, too, because this extraordinary story is part of the tapestry behind it. That's my favorite sentence in Patrick's biography, I'm just going to read, is about this period. He says that following the composition of Jerusalem,

young husband wrote over 30 published books, founded numerous outlandish societies, attempted to start a new world religion, organised the first four expeditions up Mount Everest. He took cold baths at very low temperatures, had great faith in the power of cosmic rays, and claimed there were extraterrestials with translucent flesh on a planet called Altair.

Yes, yes, I know. It is sort of Scientology-ish, isn't it? that there is an alien force that's going to come. One of the people, though, he is drawn to at this time is Rabindranath Tagore as well. He sort of starts seeking out godmen in robes or, you know, people with sort of any kind of mysticism about them. Tagore is one such, and there's a really quite fetching picture of both of them, look it up, with Tagore, and they're both sort of very intensely looking into the camera.

But he adopts various guru disguises himself. He takes the name of Shri Prohuehetswamy. Love it. It says, it was to 1930s counterculture, what the Maharishi Maheshogi was to the Beatles. You know, sort of like that is, I mean, talk about crossing the Rubicon as a personality. And then even more madly, he has a secretary and assistant called Lady Lees with whom he falls in love. And Lady Lees is, as usual, with these stories, 30 or 40 years younger. and he gets her pregnant.

And this is one of Patrick's extraordinary discoveries that no one knew before. He thinks that the child that they're going to give birth to together is going to be the godchild. And from this point, things go kind of more and more balmy. In one of his last books, Life in the Stars, young husband moves away from the idea of a world mother, which had been the subject of many of his previous spiritual books, and imagines a world leader, a university, influential figure chosen by higher beings. And this is, I think, what he thinks he's giving birth

to with Lady Lees. What? An asexual alien. Really? I mean, goodness me. He's going to say a Messiah. The God. Yes, a Messiah. So in, sort of almost on the crest of this crazy, young husband suffers a stroke and it is a fatal stroke. It kills him in 1942. And instead of being buried in, again, in India, where, you know, so much of his life, was defined, where he was born, the place that was his home that we were talking about at the beginning of the program, he is buried in Dorset next to a place that is now a caravan park. And on his gravestone, I think there's an inscription of Lassa. There's a Tibetan statue on the gravestone, which, again, is so ironic considering how he made

his name in Tibet. Did you want to quote a bit, William, just to end? I would love to, there's two lovely endings to Patrick's book. there's the kind of the first ending, which describes his death, and then there is a summary. And I'd love to read both, if you allow me. Sir Francis's young husband remained conscious almost to the last. He drifted slowly towards another world, the world of the spirit, the dimension that he had come to live and die for. He was dying, slowly dying.

Madeline Lady Lee sat with him reading prayers while he squeezed her hands to signify he understood. Very early, in the morning of Friday the 31st July, by 1942, she felt that final moment approaching. He began to leave her very calmly and peacefully. Little that after six o'clock, he died, cradled in Madeline's arms. And then Patrick ends his book by looking at this extraordinary story of this arch imperialist who became a proto-gourou. Young husband's life was shaped by his willingness to change opinions. His detached, bizarre approach to the people around him, opened up possibilities that others would never have considered. Although who is not willing or able to change his outward bearing, he remained a paragon of proud,

plight, British respectability to the end. He came to realize that his inner voices could never be ignored. After his mountainside vision in Tibet and his near fatal car accident, he slowly permitted this deeply felt spiritual impulses to come into the open. During the 1920s and 30s, he felt his way in the dark, uncertain how this mighty religious ambitions should be put into practice. Then in his final years, he stepped back from Everest and exploration and the written world, transferring his energies to the process of internal personal transformation with his beloved Madeleine Lady Lees. It was in this capacity to evolve that gave his life an epic quality, a kind of representative greatness that mirrored the era through which he lived. France's young husband belonged to Dorset, not to the Himalayas, I felt

by the end. It was his last great joy, the place where he found a love and a peace and an understanding that he never reached anywhere else. It was the right place to leave him, propped up in bed, dreaming up in probable schemes for a world conference or mystical experience, and another book, or a new society for promoting fellowship between Asiatics and visitors from the stars, drifting away a bowl of fresh raspberries and cream by his side. That was where I found young husband, I think in the exquisite haze of an autumn afternoon. That's just lovely, isn't this wonderful ending? You're in tears. Is that sort of for Patrick?

Well, Patrick also lived his life a lot in Asia, and he died in London. He rediscovered his Catholicism at the end, unexpectedly, and ended up having his ashes scattered by a river in Wiltshire. There is a great parallel between the biographer and his subject. Well, it is forever going to be a regret that we weren't able to talk to Patrick. you were able to hear from Patrick here on Empire. When we planned this originally, he was going to be doing it. He was right on our list, doesn't he?

The very first list we ever made for Empire. He was on it. But hopefully, you know, you will have some insight into what a great writer he was, what a great subject he chose. And hopefully we did him justice anyway. And until next time, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Drupal.