Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
May I be allowed, first of all, to express my gratitude to the Kathmandu Rotary Club, which
has been kind enough to let me expound on a few chosen topics.
When I had the honour to present to His Majesty King Mahendra the credentials which
accredited me to his court as the first French ambassador resident in Nepal, His Majesty was
kind enough to stress the fact that “a new chapter” was being opened in Franco-Nepalese
relations.
It has seemed of particular interest to me to assemble and go searching for the traces which
history has left behind of the origin of the first contacts between our two countries. This will
be, with your gracious pleasure, the main theme of my present lecture. Allow me, however to
underline, in all modesty, the fact that these traces, known only to a few specialists await the
thorough investigation of a real historian. I’ll be content, personally, to outline today the
sketches of chapters which I hope will eventually be written on the basis of this summary both
in Nepal and in France.
The history of the relations between Nepal and France are founded on a real enigma. On the
façade of the old palace of Hanuman Dhoka in Kathmandu, there exists, sealed in the wall, a
long and tall slab of stone with an inscription in Sanskrit. This inscription dates back to Friday
14th of January 1654, at a time when no European had yet entered Nepal. It consists of a
prayer written by King Pratap Malla in honour of Goddess Kalika and includes fifteen
different samples of scripts. Amongst these, one is a phrase in Firingi script, which includes
two French words “Autumn” and “Winter” and an English word “Winter”.
According to Sylvain Levi, who deciphered the mysterious inscription in 1898, the Poet-King
warns the reader that he will look a fool if he cannot discover the meaning of the riddle. The
French ethnologist confesses in all ingenuity his ignorance, and I am today as hopelessly
baffled in declaring that I don’t know how these two French words ever appeared in the 17th
century in Kathmandu. I incite those of you who are tempted to solve the riddle to go and
meditate upon this inscription which is still embedded in the wall of the Royal Palace. Many
explanations were put forth about this mystery. It is true that in the 17th century, French was
then the most widely-known and spoken European language. A Jesuit father’s mission settled
in Peking, had already sent from China scouts into Tibet and was preparing to explore Nepal
from there. On the other hand French and Armenian traders who had reached the frontiers of
the Himalayan Kingdom had made its existence known to the outside world. They would have
come into contact with Nepalese merchants. Maybe the former or the latter were to allow
King Pratap Mala to acquire some knowledge of my native tongue. Two other French
episodes moreover helped blaze the historical trail in Europe’s discovery of Nepal.
By that, I mean, first of all, the journey which a Jesuit father of French descent, Father
Dorville, undertook in 1661 accompanied by an Austrian, Father Gruber, from Peking to
Agra, through Si-Ning, Thangout, Lhasa and Nepal. These two Jesuits had been given the
instruction to return to Europe to take their orders from their general. Since the Dutch fleet
was blockading Chinese harbours they decided to go by land.
Leaving in June 1661, they reached Agra, in India, after 214 days of trail and 11 months since
their departure from the Chinese capital. The French father died exhausted when he arrived in
Agra, leaving the indefatigable Father Gruber pursuing his trip alone to Rome. We have little
1
information about Father Dorville whom some documents of the period also call Albert de
Bouville. We only know that he was of very noble birth, that he had been a page to the
Palatine Prince, who for that very reason was to become interested in the Jesuit mission to
Nepal, that he was good-looking and brave, that he was young and had just arrived in China
with two other missionaries on a vessel which, on its way from Portugal, had been attacked in
the Mediterranean by Moorish pirates.
Neither Father Gruber, nor of course Father Dorville were able to write a diary. The little
information that we have on their journey were found scattered in several letters which the
Austrian wrote to various priests while he was sojourning in Rome, and which father
Athanase Kircher condensed in 1672 into a summary roughly like an interview which would
have taken place in Rome in 1665.
“From Lhasa, Father Kircher writes, the fathers took 4 days to reach Mount Langur ; Mount
Langur is of unparagoned height, so much so that the travellers were scarcely able to breathe
upon reaching the summit so subtle was the air. Thus they betook themselves to Cuthy, first
hold in the Kingdom of Necbal, in the space of a month. Though this mountaineous region be
difficult to cross, nature provided them however with bountiful waters which spouted forth hot
and cold from every nook and cranny of the mountains and abundance of fish for the men and
many pastures for the animals. From Cuthi they reached the town of Nesti after a five-day
journey. The country abounds in all the necessary things of life, so much that one can easily
buy 30 to 40 chickens for a Crown-piece. From Nesti or Lesti, the capital of the kingdom of
Necbal can be reached by land in 6 days, it is called Cadmendu. The King who dwells there is
mighty. He is a pagan but not hostile to the word of Christ.
In fact the King showed himself exceedingly benevolent towards the fathers especially when
they showed him a telescope of which the Nepalese had ignored the very existence till then,
and other intriguing mathematical instruments, which delighted him to such an extent that he
would have most imperatively detained the fathers at his court had they not promised upon
leaving that they would return. He planned to have a house built for our order, to provide us
with large revenues and levies and to allow them to introduce the Law of Christ into his
Kingdom”.
The Rome interview gives us more details on the telescope episode and on the political
situation of Nepal.
“There are two capitals in this kingdom, the document reports, Catmandir and Patan which
are only separated by a river acting as boundary. The King of this country is called
Partasmal (it obviously refers to Pratap Malla). His residence is in Catmandir and his brother
dwells at Patan. It came to pass that a small King named Varcam (it refers in fact to King
Jagat Prakash Malla, King of Bhatgaon) was disturbing the countryside by the frequent
incursions there in. The father gave to the King of Catmendu a small field-glass with which he
had discovered the spot where the King of Bhatgaon had fortified his camp and made him
look in that direction. This Prince, seeing his enemy so near, rallied immediately his troops
with his shouts to march on the enemy and did not realize that the nearness had been caused
by an optical effect of the field-glass. It would be difficult to describe his delight at the gift”.
A short while after Gruber’s trip through Asia, a Frenchman, named Tavernier, was
undertaking his sixth journey towards the Far East. A jeweller of the Great-Mogol, already
acquainted with Hindusthan, he travelled on the borders of Eastern India accompanied by
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another Frenchman, named Bernier, who, for the last five years had been in the service of
Aureng-Zeb as a doctor. In this manner he went from Patna to Rajmahal. He became the first
European to collect precise data on the commercial links between Tibet and India through
Nepal. Tavernier writes that three months were needed to reach Nepal from Patna to Tibet.
The road went through Gorrochpour, and from there, says Tavernier, “there is an 8 to 9 days
journey to the foot of the high mountains, during which the caravan suffers a lot because the
country is full of forests where there are plenty of wild elephants, and the traders, instead of
sleeping at night must keep watch and be wary, light big fires and use their muskets to
frighten away the beasts. Oxen are ordinarily used as well as camels and horses bred in the
country. These horses are by nature so small that when a man is astride on them it is small
wonder if his feet touch not ground, but nonetheless they are sturdy and amble along
accomplishing 20 leagues at at time, eating and drinking seldom. When the caravan arrived
at the foot of the high ranges, nowadays known by the name of Naugrocot, a host of folks
came down from various places, in majority womenfolk and girls, who come to bargain with
those of the caravan to carry the men, the goods and the belongings over these mountains
which are very narrow and very high surrounded by deep chasms”.
Tavernier notices that the traders bring musk, and medicinal herbs back from Tibet and that
they sell coral, yellow amber, crystal tortoise-shell bracelets and other sea-shells to the
Tibetans along with many round and square coins as big as fifteen-penny piece which are also
made of tortoise-shells and sea-shells.
In the beginning of the 18th Century, in 1703 to be precise, the Holy See’s Propagation of the
Faith took away from the Jesuits the realm of Tibet and gave it to the Capuchins. From Tibet
the mission was also to take charge of Chandernagor, a French settlement in Bengal, Pathan,
in the Bihar province, Nepal and Tak-po.
Amongst the priests appointed to preach the Gospel in Catmandu, out of six fathers, five were
Italians and one French, Father François Marie de la Tours. Here again one of my countrymen
is amongst the first Europeans in history to settle in residence in Nepal. It is probable that the
French father died and was buried in Bhatgaon. In the end the Capuchins were thrown out in
1769 by King Prithibi Narayan.
Twenty four years were to go by without a single European being allowed to visit Nepal,
before the Kirkpatrick mission, sent by Lord Cornwallis, Governor-General of India, at the
end of the war which opposed Tibet, allied to China, and Nepal, stayed in Kathmandu in
March and April 1793. It is a well-known fact that this mission gave birth, after the ups and
downs in the political relationships between England and Nepal and their short war, to the
treaty signed on the 4th March 1816 of Segowli which tightened and strengthened the relations
between the two countries. It is around this time that, according to English authors, French
officers were recruited by the Government of Kathmandu to teach the Nepalese the
manufacture of guns and the techniques of artillery warfare.
In his “Rough Notes” (p.15) published in 1851, Major Cavenagh, mentioning this specific
topic declares : “All that the Nepalese know about artillery has been communicated to them in
all likelihood by French officers”. Two, in particular, seem to have been recruited by Nepal
subsequently to re-adjustment of the treaty with the English. When in 1878, the learned
French orientalist, Sylvain Levi assembled some documents for his famous book on Nepal, he
came to know about this Nepalese hearsay and mentions Cavenagh’s reference in his study.
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“It must have been, he goes on to conclude, a few of these soldiers of fortune who spread out
across the globe after Napoleon’s downfall and several of whom left a lasting impression in
the records of Indian History”.
During His Majesty’s Official Visit, a research team went through the French archives, but in
vain, in order to find a trace of these French officers. This is why one of my first concerns as
soon as I arrived in Kathmandu was to try and solve this historical riddle. I would like here to
express my heart-felt thanks to two Nepalese friends who gave me the possibility to discover
the first few signs of them : Ms Jaya Rana - Mr Rishikesh Shah. We have thus been able to
ascertain that the French artillery officer recruited by the Singh Durbar was contacted in 1793,
this means 7 months after the Kirkpatrick mission’s arrival in Kathmandu. The presence of
this French officer is actually mentioned in the reports of the Ambassador that the Indian
Company sent to Nepal, following the virtual failure of the Kirkpatrick mission, in order to
improve Anglo-Nepalese relations and to solve the border conflicts between the two
countries. This Ambassador was himself a Bengali from a noble family. He stayed in
Kathmandu from 1795 to 1796. His reports have been preserved in the Indian Archives :
“Politics and Consultations” of the same year.
This Ambassador was well informed. His reports indicate in fact that the King of Nepal had
recruited three Firingis and had placed them in command of his artillery. “One of them, he
says, must be exceedingly clever in his profession. He had been recruited in Calcutta, when
Bahadur Shah was directing Government affairs, this Frenchman was receiving a monthly
salary of 500 Rupees. 200 guns were cast under his supervision before he was dismissed”.
We have been able to find one of these Frenchmen’s mission warrants. It is dated from the 3rd
Friday of the month of November 1793. Here it is unabridged : “You, Michel Delpeche, have
had the title of Sardar conferred upon your person in order to train the Army into the
manufacture of new guns, you will be payed 501 Rupees a month. You will enjoy the freedom
from taxation in the Bara District. We have set up to this end the Hanumad Vadj Company.
The novel activity of this factory, the new techniques of manufacture, the munitions and the
parade of the artillery, as well as the workers in the field will all be under your supervision
and you will be our agent in the decisions, criticisms and advice which we will bring forth. Be
present in all the military engagements”.
In his book on Nepal published in 1928, the English writer Perceval Landon, mentions on the
other hand the recruiting by the Gurkha dynasty of three other Frenchmen in the beginning of
the 19th century to set up and supervise a military arsenal in Kathmandu. The first of these
was called Francis Neville, born of a French father and Indian mother, his assistant was
another Franco-Indian named Dibensee. The guns were cast by the Tookihur river, roughly a
mile south-east of Kathmandu. In fact it is the Tukhucha river which flows across and under
the foundation of the Royal Palace and into the Bagmati behind Thapathali. Mr Dibensee was
accompanied by another Frenchman whose name was Vincent. I have found, thanks to Mr
Rishikesh Shah, Mr Landon’s references. It is Moorcroft’s letter 35, Enclosure 2 (1809).
Upon my arrival in Kathmandu, an editorial from the Rising Nepal mentioned the influence
which the French army had brought to bear in the past on the uniforms of the Nepalese army.
This statement seems to me particularly striking in reference to the Royal Guard. Isn’t the
origin of this to be discerned in the fact that a Frenchman by the name of Ventnon was
commissioned by the Singh Durbar around 1850 to organize the Nepalese military bands,
probably after the official journey which Jung Bahadur made the same year to Paris ?
4
Mrs Sylvain Levi was therefore surprised and moved, when, accompanying her husband on
his second trip to Nepal in 1922, she relates having heard in the course of a military parade in
Tundikhel, the Royal Guard’s band playing old French military tunes, which had formed the
background to her childhood.
1850 is, in fact, a decisive date in the history of Franco-Nepalese relations. It is during that
year that Jung Bahadur undertakes official visits to both London and Paris as envoy
extraordinary of His Majesty the King of Nepal. It is as such that he is officially greeted in
France by the Prince President destined to become two years later the Emperor Napoleon III.
It is from this visit that the foundations of official connections between Paris and Kathmandu
stem.
We possess several reports of the stay of the Prime Minister in Paris and around the country.
One of these was written by Captain Cavenagh of the Army of Bengal, already quoted, who
was appointed to Jung Bahadur’s retinue, when the latter left Calcutta. The second report was
made by Jung Bahadur himself, who left a day to day record of his travel.
We know now, thanks to a dispatch from the French Consul in Calcutta that, already before
his departure to England on the 20th of March 1850, Jung Bahadur was planning to go to
France at the end of his stay in Britain. The Prime Minister in fact made himself quite clear on
that point when the British Customs who had been badly informed of his rank, attempted to
look through His Excellency’s luggage. The Ambassador of the King of Nepal declared
outright that he would not stand and see his diplomatic privileges brushed aside and ordered
his luggage to be put on a boat leaving for France. The misunderstanding was soon cleared up
however, and the official journey of the Nepalese envoy was accomplished in due pomp and
splendour. At the end of this visit the French Ambassador in London made it known to his
Government that the Ambassador of Nepal “whose brilliant attire” has been attracting the
curiosity of the British public for the last two months, would be arriving in Paris on the 22nd
of August.
In fact, the Prime Minister was being invited to visit France by the French government on the
same terms as Envoy Extraordinary of the King of Nepal ; host of the British government.
On the 21st, the party set sail for France, and landing on French soil they boarded a train
which took them to Paris and were greeted by the Chief of Protocol of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and from thence they proceeded to Hotel Sinet where they were accommodated. On
the 24th, Prince Joseph Bonaparte, the cousin of the President-Prince, soon to be acclaimed
Emperor under the name of Napoleon III, called at the Hotel Sinet and took the Prime
Minister on his first discovery of the capital. Thus they saw the palace of the Tuileries, the
Champs Elysées, the Arsenal and the Magazine. They went on the morrow to see Place
Vendome, a monumental square built in 1708 in the center of which stands the famous
column, 44 meters high, and erected with the bronze of 1200 canons taken from the enemy in
1805 by Napoleon Ist’s armies whose statue stands on top of the monument.
On the morning of the 27th, he received a visit from General Cavaignac who came to enquire
if he could be of service to his guest, who assured his host that he was perfectly at home and
was highly obliged for the attention he was constantly receiving. He was informed by General
Cavaignac that he would have an audience with the Prince President on the 30th.
5
On Friday, being the day fixed for the Minister’s interview with the President, a guard of
honour was drawn up before the Hotel Sinet at the appointed hour to escort the Nepalese
mission to the presidential palace, where he was received at the gate by Prince Louis
Napoleon, who, after shaking hands with him led him into the hall of audience and seated him
by his side. There were present some 350 members or deputies of the Republic, and of them
the principal persons were introduced to the Minister who in turn presented his own suite to
the Prince.
After the usual exchange of compliments, Prince Napoleon remarked that the only idea they
hitherto had of the Nepalese was that they were a warlike nation of the Himalayan regions and
were neighbours to the British in India, but that they now had gotten an opportunity to see for
themselves what otherwise was only a vague conception. He added that it gave him great
pleasure to be made known to one who was the epitome of all that was great and good in his
country. The Prince then wanted to know what he could do to make his Excellency’s stay in
Paris agreeable, and by way of affording him some little enjoyment, he proposed to hold a
ball in his honour.
But Jung Bahadur made answer that by the kind courtesy of the President and the people he
had already seen much and enjoyed much, and desired nothing further than beholding a grand
muster of a 100,000 troops of the French armies. The President promised to meet his wishes
on his return from Cherbourg, if it was at all possible. For in the agitated state of French
politics which followed the revolutionary outbreak of 1848, it could not be definitely
ascertained how the people would interpret such a vast concentration of troops at the capital.
He assured his guest at the same time that every effort would be made to make the review as
grand as was consistent with political safety.
Jung Bahadur then visited the mausoleum of Napoleon the Great at the Hotel des Invalides.
He was attended by General Petit to the mausoleum where he was offered one of the wreaths
that decorated the imperial coffin, which he gratefully accepted and undertook to preserve as a
memorial of his visit to the tomb of the great warrior and monarch. He also paid a visit to
Jerome Bonaparte, one of the brothers of the great Napoleon who showed him many
interesting relics of his illustrious brother.
On the first of September, Jung Bahadur visited the Arch of Triumph. Between the 3 rd and the
16th, he successively visited the church of the Madeleine, the chateau de Compiègne, the
Place de la Concorde, the gardens of Luxembourg, the Circus, where he greatly admired the
display of French horsemanship, Fontainebleau, and other places of interest in and around
Paris. On the 17th, he attended the ballet “Le Violon du Diable” and being much struck with
the dancing of Cerite, presented that dazzling ballerina with as dazzling a present in the shape
of a magnificient bracelet, studded with brilliants, which she accepted with many graceful
bows which must have made a lasting impression in the warrior’s heart. On Friday, the 20th of
September, he paid a visit to the famous palace of Versailles. There a French newspaper of
the time reports he was met with all the splendour which is so typical of that place.
Chandeliers, draperies, gilt, corridors everything was laid out to pay him homage in a far
grander decor than the one set out for the Ambassador of the King of Siam. No other oriental
Prince has thus been greeted at Versailles, the newspaper went on, everything was set in
motion except for the waterfalls, which were being repaired.
The review which Jung Bahadur had solicited the President to hold came off on the 24th, and
the Minister accompanied Prince Napoleon to the plain of Satory, near Versailles, to see it.
6
The display was a great success, the discipline maintained by the soldiers admirable. When
the march past was over, the Minister and the President rode side by side to Versailles where
a grand public meeting was held to bid farewell to their departing guest.
After a long discourse on Nepal, France and Great Britain, the President presented Jung
Bahadur with a medallion and Napoleon I’s great sword of command, which Jung Bahadur
was still carrying on his triumphant return to Kathmandu and which can be seen to this day in
the Museum of Nepal. His Excellency accepted the gifts with thanks, stating that the kindness
shown to him was itself a medallion, which rendered it impossible for him ever to forget his
kind host and had no need of any outward token. The Minister in turn presented a self portrait
to the President who accepted it with profuse thanks, saying that it would always decorate his
room, as it was the likeness of a valiant Nepalese Prince, whom he always wished to keep
fresh in his memory.
The next move was towards Marseilles, but the party halted for a day at Lyon, which they
reached on the morning of the 3rd of October. Here is the account the count of Grammont
gives of Jung Bahadur’s stay : “The Ambassador of Nepal, Jung Bahadur Kouwur Ranaya,
arrived at half past nine in Lyon with his retinue of 32 persons. I sent a staff officer to the
Ambassador to ask him whether he would be interested in some military manoeuvers and a
sham siege which were to be performed in his honour. The Defence of the fort was two
battalions strong, part of the garrison had come to meet the Ambassador before the
manoeuvers began. He arrived at half past two escorted by a horse patrol, two soldiers had to
be posted at the entrance to his hotel to scare away the crowd of on lookers. The Ambassador
of Nepal saw an engagement from a hillock overlooking a bridge and witnessed an infantry
charge by a Company of Grenadiers. Entertainments of a soldierly character always pleased
his soldierly mind, and he was highly delighted with the function of the day, and heartily
thanked the General for the amusement he had provided him”.
Lastly here is a description by General Count de Castellane of Jung Bahadur’s uniforms and
physical appearance : “Prince Jung Bahadur returned form manoeuvers in his coach along
the banks of the Saône and there were throngs of onlookers. He is literally covered in jewels :
his helmet is bedecked in pearls and diamonds, topped by a crest of birds of paradise feathers
; he was wearing enoumous earrings with pearls and rubies, a necklace of pearls and
diamonds said to be worth seven hundred thousand francs, a tunic strewn with diamonds and
a magnificient saber. I went to see Prince Jung at the hotel du Parc, he was in informal attire
; he had an embroidered cap on, a great coloured tunic and he had replaced his red trousers
by green ones. He insisted on reaccompanying me to my horse”.
On the 4th of October, the Minister and his party reached Marseilles where the H.M.S. “The
Growler” was waiting to convey them to Alexandria.
Not before the First World War did Nepalese set foot again on French soil. (And by Nepalese
I mean these famous Gurkha regiments who fought in my country in 1914 and 1915, and
whose glorious feats I will relate presently).
As for the presence of Frenchmen in Nepal, I must mention the scientific mission headed by
Dr Gustave Le Bon which came here in 1884 on an appointment from the French Ministry of
Public Instruction. Dr Le Bon published the results of his research in 1886 under the care of
the Hachette Firm titled : “A Journey to Nepal”, a book which is one of the best guides to the
monuments of Nepal. But more important still, one must mention the stay which Mr Sylvain
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Levi made in Nepal in 1898. This famous French orientalist compiled a three-volume
historical and scientific survey of the Kingdom and this work is still considered today as being
one of the most fundamental studies ever undertaken on Nepal.
After the First World War Sylvain Levi was to return to Nepal with his wife. The young
scientist of 1898 had become in 1922 a world renowned celebrity. A professor at the College
de France he was being invited back to Nepal by the Nepalese Government to assemble and
decipher documents and sanskrit inscriptions in order to further our knowledge of the
Kingdom’s history. I have here a photo of Mr and Mrs Sylvain Levi in Nepalese costume
kindly given to me by General Brahma Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana who came to know
them well, though still a child, since he was taking, along with his two cousins, French classes
from Mrs Sylvain Levi. She, in fact, mentions them in her log-book (travel-diary).
But ever since Jung Bahadur’s visit to Paris in 1850, the publication of Mr Sylvain Levi’s
book and the Gurkha regiment’s active participation in the 14-18 war, Nepal had come to be
well known in my country. And it is timely to recall here the Nepalese Gurkha’s share in the
First World War.
I owe the details of what I am about to relate to the obliging services of the British Embassy
which is in possession of the chronicles of the Gurkha Units posted in France.
In the autumn of 1914, the British expeditionary force in France, hastily set ashore on the
continent, badly equipped and made to sustain the heavy assaults of German troops, was in a
state akin to exhaustion. The core of the British troops was still under training. It seemed vital
to the command-in-chief to have reinforcements speedily brought in. The Indian Army
seemed the solution. An expeditionary corps of Indian and Gurkha soldiers was formed. They
reached France in the autumn of 1914 and were thrown into the fray as soon as they arrived,
just in time to hinder the Germans from advancing. The four Gurkha battalions belonging to
the Lahore division and the four others belonging to the Meerout divison reached Marseilles
in two convoys, escorted form Suez onwards by the French battle-cruiser Jaure-Guiberry. In
Marseilles two French interpreters were attached to the divisions. Our Gurkhas received an
enthusiastic welcome from the French population, and newspapers report that gifts were
presented to them.
From Marseilles, the Gurkhas went for a few days to a recruiting camp in the heart of France,
in Orleans, then they were thrown into the fight 22 days after their arrival (in France). The
lines they occupied were in the North of my country on the border of France and Belgium,
between Givinchy and Champigny, the brunt of the German offensive bearing to the center of
this boundary at Neume La Chapelle. The conditions under which the Gurkhas had to counter
the German attack would have discouraged any other troops. These men, who were used to
the sun and jungle warfare, whose prowness in individual combat were well-known, had all of
a sudden, to face an ocean of mud and water, a biting cold, modern artillery barrages, raking
machine-gun fire and all the modern techniques of mass warfare of the 20th century.
But the Gurkhas along with their British officers were swift to adapt themselves to the
situation and their bravery won them countless honours. From October 1914 to November
1915, at Neuve La Chapelle, at Givinchy, at Ypres, at Pietre, they held back, gave way under
over powering numbers and regained several times the German positions constraining the
enemy to abandon the attempt of making a cleavage through the Allies’ fortifications. They
8
came triumphant out of the battle. But they did not only leave behind the memory of heroic
soldiers.
At the rear, and in a country where the men were absent on the battlefields, they became
greatly appreciated by the civilian population amongst whom they made many friends. “The
women, their chronicles wrote, came to discover that the Gurkhas knew better than most
other races how to behave. They were immensely astonished and delighted that the men
should bring them back the eggs which they found in farm courtyards. “What nice men”
declared an old woman, “our boys would have made omlets with our eggs”.
It is a pleasant felling to be able to say that a non-commissioned Gurkha officer was given the
military medal by the French Government. It is the highest French honour granted to Generals
who have carried the day and to non-commissioned officers for exceptional acts of bravery.
The first Nepalese holder of this glorious French decoration is Mr Halividar, who belonged to
the Gurkha I-4 Battalion. I was extremely touched when, arriving in Nepal, his family came to
make themselves known to me at the Embassy.
It is once more through the Sylvain Levi family that Franco-Nepalese official connections
were at the time resumed. The Kathmandu Museum has preserved a photograph of the
ceremony at which an Envoy Extraordinary from France bestows upon the Prime Minister of
Nepal the Insignae of Grand Croix of the Legion d’Honneur. This was in 1925. The envoy’s
retinue was composed of Mr Gareau Dombasle and of a young Secretary from the diplomatic
corps, the son of Sylvain Levi, who was to become after the Second World War, the first
French Ambassador accredited to the court of Kathmandu. He can still be seen today in the
Nepalese Capital’s Museum, very young and slim in his Diplomat’s Uniform. Through his
father and mother, and through his own work, the history of Franco-Nepalese relations has
almost become family history.
I would not conclude without mentioning that it was a French expedition, led by Mr Maurice
Herzog, which conquered, for the first time in 1950, the summit of the Annapurna. It is
common knowledge that Maurice Herzog and his two companions came down from the peaks
that time with frozen feet. I retraced in Pokhara, where he is the military commander, the
officer who accompanied the French expedition and who brought Maurice Herzog back on his
shoulders. His name is Major Ghana Bikram Rana, and he was at the time a young Lieutenant
in the Nepalese Army.
An other Rifleman, Mandap Thapa was awarded the French Croix de Guerre with palme. May
I also recall the particularly touching fact which links my country’s history to yours. It was
indeed in Nice that His Majesty The King, who was the Crown Prince, met for the last time
His Majesty King Tribhuban before the illustrious monarch died in Zurich.
These are, Mr President, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, the few facts which I
have been able to gather on the first chapters of Franco-Nepalese relations. They appear as
particularly symbolic. It is undoubtedly a pleasure for me that the French were amongst the
first Europeans to discover and to make Nepal known to the outside world. It is also a cause
for rejoicing that the Gurkha soldiers came a century later to France repaying thus the help
which some of my compatriots brought to their army in the past. It is also satisfactory to
consider that before the connections became official between the two countries, they had
already been established in the fields of mutual cooperation, science, faith and manly virtues,
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which our two countries, whose people are peaceful but quickly stirred to warriors, are
endowed with.
But it is even more of a pleasure for me to recall, that at the source of it all two French words
appear, illustrating once more the phrase from “The Holy Text”. “In the Beginning was the
Verb”. For from the verb is the spirit generated, from the spirit knowledge and from
knowledge the mutual respect which is the spring of international relations and of the very
relationship between France and Nepal.
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