the Tibetans, as hostile foreigners to be attacked. Zhongtian (Chungtien) was the location of Batang monastery. The Tibetans slaughtered the converts, torched the building of the missionaries in Batang due to their xenophobia. Sir Francis Edward Younghusband wrote that At the same time, on the opposite side of Tibet they were still more actively aggressive, expelling the Roman Catholic missionaries from their long-established homes at Batang, massacring many of their converts, and burning the mission-house. There was anti-Christian sentiment and xenophobia running rampant in Tibet. In October 1906, John Weston Brooke was the first Englishman to gain an audience with the Dalai Lama, and subsequently he was granted permission to lead two expeditions into Tibet. Also in 1906, Sir Charles Alfred Bell, was invited to visit Thubten Chökyi Nyima, the 9th Panchen Lama at Tashilhunpo, where they had friendly discussions on the political situation. The Dalai Lama later stayed at the great Kumbum Monastery near Xining and then travelled east to the most sacred of four Buddhist mountain in China, Wutai Shan located 300 km from Beijing. From here, the Dalai Lama received a parade of envoys: William Woodville Rockhill, the American Minister in Peking; Gustaf Mannerheim, an Imperial Russian army colonel, who later became the Marshal of Finland and the 6th President of Finland; a German doctor from the Peking Legation; an English explorer named Christopher Irving; R.F. Johnson, a British diplomat from the Colonial Service; and Henri D'Ollone, the French army major and viscount. The Dalai Lama was mounting a campaign to strengthen his international ties and free his kingdom from Chinese rule. In June 1908, C.G.E. Mannerheim met Thubten Gyatso in Wutai Shan during the course of his expedition from Turkestan to Peking. Mannerheim wrote his diary and notes in Swedish to conceal the fact that his ethnographic and scientific party was also an elaborate intelligence gathering mission for the Imperial Russian army. The 13th Dalai Lama gave a blessing of white silk for the Russian Czar. Worried about his safety, Mannerheim gave Tibet's spiritual pontiff a Browning revolver and showed him how to reload the weapon. In September 1908, the Dalai Lama was granted an audience with the Guangxu Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi. The emperor tried to stress Tibet's subservient role, although the Dalai Lama refused to kowtow to him. He stayed in Beijing until the end of 1908. When he returned to Tibet in