When Britain annexed Burma in 1885, the Chin Hills remained independent. King Thibaw Min had never held authority there, and the Chin peoples governed themselves through tribal councils. The trouble began with a trade route. British administrators wanted a passage linking Myanmar and eastern India through the hills. Tashon Chief Pu Con Bik refused. Negotiations collapsed, and Chin warriors raided the Kalay and Kabaw valleys in the lowlands. The Tashons further antagonized the British by harboring Prince Shwegyophyu, wanted for the killing of two British officers during the Chinbyit Battle. When ultimatums to surrender the prince and other captives went ignored, Britain launched the Chin-Lushai Expedition of 1888-1889. General Sir George White, Commander-in-Chief of Burma, arrived personally to oversee the campaign -- a measure of how seriously the British took the Chin resistance.

The Chin did not go quietly. A combined force of 1,630 warriors from the Sizang, Kamhau, and Sukte tribes assembled to defend their homeland. With no roads into the hills, the British had to build a mule track as they advanced, and the Chin attacked the construction parties relentlessly. On Christmas Day 1888, a coordinated assault hit multiple British positions simultaneously -- road workers, village garrisons, and military posts as far as 20 miles apart -- demonstrating planning abilities that impressed even the invaders. General White later wrote of the Chin: "Most difficult enemy to see or hit I ever fought." They stood their ground until physically charged, fired at least a thousand rounds per engagement, and attempted to outflank the British even when outgunned. But superior firepower told in the end. By February 1889, the British had captured the Sizang settlements, and by 6 March, not a single Sizang village remained standing. The people retreated into the forest to wage guerrilla war for two more years.

Siallum was the Sizang answer to every previous defeat. Open engagements and stockade defenses had both failed against British charges and artillery. The warriors designed something new: a system of covered trenches invisible from above, divided into three sections. The Kulhpi served as the main fighting position. The Kulhpeang housed the spirit medium Pu En Khawm and his family, maintaining a spiritual dimension to the defense. And the Nupi Kulh sheltered some 80 women, children, and elders during the battle. A watchtower called the Ngalvildum stood at Nalum Mual, where Pu Zong On kept vigil. On 4 May 1889, it was the garrison's dogs -- fox terriers -- that first detected the approaching British column, followed by Zong On's sighting from the tower. The Chin Field Force, 65 rifles of the Norfolk Regiment and 60 of the 42nd Gurkha Light Infantry under Captain C.H. Westmoreland, advanced into a fight they had not expected.

The battle was fierce enough to earn Surgeon Captain Ferdinand Le Quesne of the Chin Field Force the Victoria Cross for his gallantry under fire. British casualties were four killed and ten wounded. The Chin lost 28, including Buanman Chief Pu Lian Kam and the watchman Pu Zong On. Among the dead were ten women, their names recorded alongside the warriors: Pi Lian Vung, Pi Kuai Hung, Pi Vung Neam and others who died defending the Nupi Kulh. After the battle, the Chin repaired the fort and prepared for another assault. General Symons returned on 10 May with 150 rifles. He found fresh graves and bodies still buried in the trenches. The fort was destroyed and burned. The Sizang's covered-trench innovation had not saved them, but it had forced a British general to come back with reinforcements to finish what a full column could not complete the first time.

A poem still displayed at the fort site captures what Siallum means to the Chin people. Written by the Reverend T. Hau Go Sukte, it reads: "Mark ye well this honoured spot, / Stained with blood of heroes slain; / They to keep our ancient lot, / Fought a horde from Great Britain." Pu Pau Thual, who fought at Siallum, composed his own verse recalling how the bodies of relatives served as his fort while he called out the heroic names of his clansmen. These poems are not quaint relics. They are acts of memory in a culture where oral tradition carries legal and spiritual weight. The fort near Voklak village is gone, its trenches filled and its timber long rotted. But the names of all 28 Chin dead survive in written lists, and the poems ensure that what happened on 4 May 1889 remains part of a living conversation about resistance, sacrifice, and the cost of defending one's homeland against overwhelming force.