Battle of Kirtipur

Eyewitness accounts

The Battle of Kirtipur is also known for its vicious fighting and intense cruelty. Shah's victorious army cut off the noses and lips of the defeated townspeople for putting up such fierce resistance.

An Italian Capuchin missionary, Father Giuseppe, Prefect of the Roman Mission, has written about the mutilated defenders that "it was most shocking to see so many living people with their teeth and noses resembling the skulls of the deceased."

In 1793, when Colonel Kirkpatrick, envoy of Charles Cornwallis, governor-general of British India, visited Kathmandu 26 years after the battle, he saw these noseless men, and has written about his experience in his memoirs: "We came to the knowledge of this fact in consequence of observing among the porters who transported our baggage over the hills a remarkable number of noseless men, the singularity of the circumstance leading us to inquire into the cause of it." Cutting off the nose or ear was also a punishment for theft, forgery, or moral misconduct in those times and is still associated with Honour in Nepali society.

According to historians, the defenders of Kirtipur whose noses were cut off numbered 865. Also an interesting fact is that the valley Kings had Khas, Magars, Tamangs, Tirahutiyas (eastern Bihar) and local Newars in their army. Jayanta Rana, Parshuram Thapa and his brother Dayaram Thapa were the main commanders of the valley forces.

The blockade

The Gorkhalis desired the Kathmandu Valley due to its rich culture, trade, industry and agriculture. In 1736, the Gorkhali king Nara Bhupal Shah launched an attack on Nuwakot, a border town and fort in the northwest of the valley, to probe its defences. His troops were badly defeated.

His son Prithvi Narayan Shah became king in 1742 and resumed the campaign. Convinced he would not be able to take Kathmandu with strength, Shah sought to subdue the valley by choking its commerce and supply lines. His forces occupied strategic passes in the surrounding hills, and strangled the vital trade links with Tibet and India.

In 1744, he took Nuwakot, which gave him a foothold in Nepal and allowed him to stop its trade with Tibet as it lay on the trans-Himalayan trade route. In 1762 and 1763, the Gorkhalis overran Makwanpur and Dhulikhel respectively, surrounding the Kathmandu Valley from the west, south and east.

In a bid to cause a famine, he mounted a blockade preventing any grain from passing into the valley. Blockade runners were hung from the trees on the roads. The prolonged siege forced the king of Kathmandu to appeal to the British East India Company for help. In August 1767, Captain George Kinloch led a British force towards the valley to rescue its beleaguered inhabitants. He reached within 75 km of Kathmandu and captured the forts at Sindhuli and Hariharpur, but the Gorkhalis attacked them on their way and the Party retreated to Bettiah.

First assault

The Gorkhalis had set up a base on Dahachok, a hill on the valley's western rim, from where they mounted their assaults on Kirtipur. They were armed with swords, bows and arrows and muskets.

During the first assault in 1757, the Gorkhali army was badly beaten. As they advanced towards Kirtipur, the Newars went to meet them under the command of Kaji Danuvanta. The two forces fought on the plain of Tyangla Phant in the northwest of Kirtipur. The Newars defended their town ferociously. The Gorkhali commander Kalu Pande was killed, and the Gorkhali king himself barely escaped with his life into the surrounding hills disguised as a saint.

Second assault

Having no hope of taking Kirtipur by force, Shah mounted a blockade in an effort to starve the population into submission. The embargo was enforced by putting to death anybody found on the road with salt or cotton. But the Newars held out.

In 1764, Shah ordered his troops to storm the town a second time. The Gorkhalis attacked at night under the command of Shah's brother Suruparatna (alternative name: Surpratap). The people of Kirtipur beat off the Gorkhalis again, raining stones on the invaders from the town walls. In the fighting, Surpratap was struck by an arrow in the eye and blinded.

Third assault

In 1767, the king of Gorkha sent his army to attack Kirtipur a third time under the command of Surpratap. In response, the three kings of Nepal joined forces and sent their troops to the relief of Kirtipur, but they could not dislodge the Gorkhalis from their positions. A noble of Lalitpur named Danuvanta crossed over to Shah's side and treacherously let the Gorkhalis into the town.

The inhabitants could have fought on, but exhausted by a prolonged siege and assured by Shah's promise of an amnesty, they surrendered. Two days later, enraged by the losses inflicted on his army and the injury done to his brother during the protracted war, Shah ordered that the town's prominent inhabitants be killed, and the noses and lips of everybody cut off.

The victory in the Battle of Kirtipur climaxed Shah's two-decade-long effort to take possession of the wealthy Kathmandu Valley. After the fall of Kirtipur, Shah took the other cities Kathmandu and Lalitpur in 1768 and Bhaktapur in 1769, completing his conquest of the valley. He thus established the Shah dynasty in Nepal by replacing the Malla dynasty. Shah rule came to an end when Nepal became a republic in 2008.

Heroine of Kirtipur

Kirti Laxmi, a Newar woman of Kirtipur, fought the invaders disguised as a man named Bhairav Singh. Armed with a bow and arrows, she kept fighting even after the Gorkhalis had taken the town. She inspired the townspeople with her bravery not to give up. She was finally captured and kept in captivity where she took her own life. She is honored as the heroine of Kirtipur.

It is often regarded that Kirti Laxmi is an avatar of Holy Goddess (AJIMAA) of Newars, who was responsible for saving the kingdom of Kirtipur. The name Kirtipur is named after Kirti Laxmi.

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