Next day, shortly after noon, a signal gun was fired to indicate that the armistice was at an end, and the General forthwith began his preparations to storm the formidable hill fortress. The Tibetans had taken advantage of the armistice to build more walls and sangars. No one could look at the bristling jong without realizing how difficult was the task before our troops, and without anxiety as to the outcome of the assault in killed and wounded. But we all knew that the jong had to be taken, whatever the cost.
Operations began in the afternoon, the General making a demonstration against the left face of the jong and Palkhor Choide Monastery. Fuller's battery took up a position about 1,600 yards from the jong. Five companies of infantry were extended on either flank. Both the jong and monastery opened fire on our troops, and we had one man mortally wounded. The General's intention, however, was only to deceive the Tibetans into thinking that we intended to assault from that side. As soon as dusk fell, the troops were withdrawn and preparations made for the real assault.
The south-eastern face of the rock on which the jong is built is most precipitous, yet this was exactly the face which the General decided to storm. His reasons, I imagine, were that the fringe of houses at the base of the rock was thinnest on this side, and that the very multiplicity of sangars and walls that the enemy had built prevented their having the open field of fire necessary to stop a rush. Moreover, down the middle of the rock ran a deep fissure or cleft, which was commanded, the General noticed, by no tower or loopholed wall. At two points, however, the Tibetans had built walls across the fissure. The first of these the General believed could be breached by our artillery. Our troops through that could work their way round to either flank, and so into the heart of the jong.
The plan of operations was very simple. Before dawn three columns were to rush the fringe of houses at the base. Then was to follow a storm of artillery fire directed on all the salient points of the jong, after which our guns were to make a breach in the lower wall across the cleft up which the storming-party was later on to climb.