Burmese–Siamese wars: A Visual History

The Burmese-Siamese wars (1547-1855) were a series of some 20 conflicts between the Burmese kingdoms of Toungoo and Konbaung and the Siamese kingdoms of Ayutthaya and Thonburi-Bangkok. Bayinnaung of Toungoo captured Ayutthaya in 1569 and made Siam a vassal until Naresuan won independence, killing the Burmese crown prince in an elephant duel in 1593. The Konbaung king Hsinbyushin's armies destroyed Ayutthaya utterly in April 1767; Taksin and then Rama I rebuilt Siam and beat off Bodawpaya's Nine Armies in 1785-1786. The last war in 1849-1855 was over Kengtung; British conquest of Burma ended the rivalry. The wars fixed the Burma-Thailand border and are central to both national memories.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Burmese-Siamese wars. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Ayutthaya's population

Timeline of the Burmese-Siamese wars

1. 1547
   Tabinshwehti's invasion
2. 1569
   Bayinnaung takes Ayutthaya
3. 1593
   Nong SaraiNaresuan's elephant duel.
4. 1760
   Alaungpaya's siege fails
5. 1767
   Ayutthaya destroyed7 April.
6. 1785
   Nine Armies' War
7. 1826
   British defeat Burma
8. 1855
   Last Burmese-Siamese war ends

Toungoo Burma and Ayutthaya

Tabinshwehti's invasion of 1547-1549 failed, but his successor Bayinnaung, master of the largest empire in Southeast Asian history, took Ayutthaya in 1569 after a siege and carried its king to Pegu. Prince Naresuan, raised as a hostage in Burma, threw off vassalage in 1584 and at Nong Sarai in 1593 killed the Burmese crown prince Mingyi Swa in single combat on elephant-back, a scene painted on every Thai school wall. Toungoo declined and the seventeenth century was mostly peace.

The fall of Ayutthaya

The Konbaung founder Alaungpaya besieged Ayutthaya in 1760 and died on the retreat. His son Hsinbyushin sent two armies from north and south in 1765; after a 14-month siege the Burmese breached the walls on 7 April 1767, burned the city of a million to the ground, melted its Buddhas for gold and marched off the royal family and tens of thousands of captives. Ayutthaya was never rebuilt. Burma's simultaneous war with Qing China (1765-1769) forced most of its troops to withdraw.

Taksin, Rama I and the end

The half-Chinese general Taksin retook the country within a year and ruled from Thonburi; his successor Rama I founded Bangkok in 1782. Bodawpaya's Nine Armies invasion of 1785, 144,000 men on five fronts, was defeated piecemeal by Rama I and his brother, and further attacks in 1786-1787 and 1809 failed. Burma's defeat by Britain in 1824-1826 ended its threat; a last Siamese attempt on Kengtung in 1849-1855 was the final chapter. Britain's annexation of Upper Burma in 1885 removed the rival state entirely.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Khmer Empire (802 to 1431)
• Qing dynasty (1636 to 1912)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• First Portuguese Empire (1415 to 1663)
• Spanish Empire (1492 to 1976)
• Dutch Empire (1602 to 1975)

Wars of the same era and region

• Tay Son wars (1771 to 1802)
• Myanmar conflict (1948 to present)
• Cuban wars of independence and Spanish-American War (1868 to 1898)
• Philippine-American War (1899 to 1902)

8 surprising things about the Burmese-Siamese wars

1. Ayutthaya in 1700 was one of the largest cities in the world, compared by Europeans to Paris.
2. The Burmese melted the gold from Ayutthaya's Buddhas; the ruined city is now a UNESCO site.
3. Naresuan's elephant duel is Thailand's founding legend of independence and the subject of a six-film epic.
4. Bodawpaya's Nine Armies were the largest Burmese force ever assembled, and Siam's victory is celebrated as the birth of modern Thailand.
5. Taksin was deposed and executed by his own generals in 1782, allegedly for madness, and Rama I founded the current Chakri dynasty.
6. The Thai national anthem's predecessor and many Thai epics stem from the trauma of 1767.
7. Bayinnaung's empire in 1580 stretched from Manipur to Laos, the largest in mainland Southeast Asian history.
8. Both Burma and Thailand claim the sixteenth-century warrior culture and elephants as national symbols.

Sources

• Burmese-Siamese wars Wikipedia
• Ayutthaya Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Konbaung dynasty Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, A History of Ayutthaya (2017) Cambridge University Press

Back to all empires and wars