The fall of Ayutthaya
King Narai’s era is regarded as the time when Ayutthaya was at its peak. After the dynastic convulsions that followed him had subsided there was a brief period of stability in the first half of the eighteenth century, but Ayutthaya’s influence was waning. The city-state had always controlled its provinces and vassal states with a relatively loose hand, and as a consequence many had become powerful in their own right and less inclined to be subservient to the king. Although the Khmer empire had been eclipsed by Ayutthaya, and the Europeans no longer presented a threat, the Burmese had risen in power in the middle of the sixteenth century and had overrun Chiang Mai and the Lanna kingdom in the north, where they stayed for two centuries. During the second half of the sixteenth century the Burmese had laid siege to Ayutthaya and captured the city for a brief period before they were driven out.
In the middle of the eighteenth century there were more struggles over the royal succession in Ayutthaya, amounting almost to civil war and culminating in the crowning of King Ekkathat. He was to be the last monarch. Ayutthaya had formed an alliance with the Mons who were fighting the Burmese, and in 1760 the Burmese attempted to invade Ayutthaya. Ekkathat, his kingdom weakened by internal turmoil, managed to repel them, but in 1765 they returned with enormous armies converging on Ayutthaya from both the west and the north, capturing peripheral cities to remove any chance of support for the capital. The Burmese laid siege for two years and when they broke through in 1767 they utterly destroyed the city, looting and burning its palaces, temples, libraries and houses. Ekkathat fled, and was discovered by monks in woodland several days later, dead from starvation.
During the siege, about a year before Ayutthaya fell, a Siamese general named Taksin managed to break out of the city with five hundred troops and he headed for the east coast, to Rayong, far away from Burmese influence. He was too late to save Ayutthaya, but at Chantaburi and along the eastern coast he built up an army of 5,000. With a land assault impractical, Taksin assembled a fleet of ships and sailed up the Chao Phraya to Thonburi, where the Burmese had installed a puppet governor. The Thonburi forces were overpowered and the governor executed. Taksin and his men sailed on up the river and drove the invaders out of Ayutthaya and back across the border into their own country. Ayutthaya was no longer habitable, and so Taksin as the new ruler had to make a very fast choice of location for a new capital. He selected Thonburi. There was already a thriving community, a port and fortifications, and the river and canals formed a moat.
Taksin’s kingdom
Taksin is one of the most remarkable figures in Thai history. He was part Chinese, his tax-collector father having been Teochew Chinese and his mother Siamese. The boy was given the name of Sin, and showing great promise he had joined the service of King Ekkathat. Eventually he rose to become the governor of Tak, a province in the north of Thailand that borders Burma. This brought him the title of Phraya Tak, or Lord Tak, and from there he became popularly known as Phraya Tak Sin. He was crowned king at Wang Derm Palace in Thonburi on 28th December 1768, at the age of 34.
Much of the new king’s reign was devoted to warfare. Several of the provinces in the east, north and south had broken away and were declaring themselves independent. Taksin waged campaigns against the rebels, he drove the Burmese out of Lanna, and he extended his power into Laos, Cambodia, and part of the Malay peninsula. Despite an almost continual state of warfare—and Taksin was a king and a general who led from the front—he still paid a great deal of attention to the transformation of Thonburi from garrison town to capital, renovating temples and building new ones, ordering canals to be dug, promoting trade with other countries including China, Britain and the Netherlands, and encouraging education and the arts. He brought in prisoners of war from his battles and used them as labour.
Craftsmen who had survived the destruction of Ayutthaya settled in Thonburi and formed their own communities. With China supplying money and manpower, Chinese traders thrived. The Portuguese, who supplied Taksin with arms and ammunition, were given a plot of land on the riverside. Indian and Malay Muslim traders established themselves along the canal banks.
Although much was accomplished in a short time, Siam was still in chaos. The breakdown of institutions and society proved a harder battle than retaking the provinces. Internally, the country was almost ungovernable. There were other contenders for the throne, and even the priesthood was in rebellion. Perhaps the strain was too much, for Taksin began to exhibit symptoms of mental derangement. He attempted to tame the priesthood by declaring himself an incarnation of the Buddha, punishing monks who would not worship him. He imprisoned, tortured and executed court officials who he believed were plotting against him, and certainly, with no royal bloodline to connect him to the old nobility of Ayutthaya, there were many who regarded him as a usurper. Morale in Thonburi sank to the point where, with the country largely held together by a mix of force and patronage, it was felt that the kingdom was yet again in danger of disintegration.
A court rebellion in early 1782 signalled the end for Taksin. Siam’s highest ranking noble, Thong Duang, more usually known by his title, Chao Phraya Maha Chakri, was away fighting in Cambodia, but he returned to Thonburi and rounded up the leaders. Chakri decided that the king had to be removed permanently. The generally accepted version of history is that Taksin was taken to Wat Arun, where he was placed inside a velvet sack and beaten to death with a scented sandalwood club, the traditional method of execution for anyone of royal bloodline, the belief being that no drop of royal blood should be spilled upon the ground. Another account says he was beheaded in front of Wichaiprasit Fort. A conspiracy theory of the time says that he faked his madness, as the country had become ungovernable and he was deeply in debt to the Chinese who had supplied much of the funding for his wars and nation building, and that he was secretly removed to a remote temple in the mountains of Nakhon Si Thammarat, where he lived to a ripe old age, dying in 1825. Whatever actually happened, the reign of King Taksin ended on 6th April 1782.
The Bangkok era
Chao Phraya Maha Chakri immediately proclaimed himself king, initially as Phra Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke, later becoming known as Rama I when the method of naming monarchs in this fashion was introduced by Rama VI. He was the founder of the Chakri dynasty that rules Thailand to this day.
Thonburi was capital of Thailand for only fifteen years, from 1767 until 1782, and Taksin was its only king. When Rama I came to the throne he was very much aware that the canal moat would not provide an effective barrier against a determined invasion by the Burmese. The area contained within the waterways was also too small for what was now a growing city. The king turned his thoughts to the land on the eastern bank of the river. There were numerous settlements and temples but they were scattered amongst the farmlands, orchards and marshy countryside. Directly opposite Thonburi the riverbank was occupied mainly by Chinese merchants and their godowns and the land was reasonably clear and dry, for the French fortifications had been extensive, and Taksin had already dug canals behind the merchant community for drainage and transportation. Enlarging these canals would form a protective moat and create an island. Predatory Burmese in the west would be kept at bay by the river, while to the east lay a broad expanse of impassable delta land known as the Sea of Mud. Heavy fortifications could be built along the river to discourage a sea-born invasion. Rama I could see that a city of similar grandeur to Ayutthaya would be able to rise from such a secure setting. The Chinese merchants were offered an area of land not far from their original settlement, and do not appear to have offered any resistance to the move. With a new capital city to be constructed on their doorstep they were probably delighted.
At the auspicious time and date of 6:45 a.m. on the 21st April 1782, the stakes were driven into the soil of Bangkok for the City Pillar, marking the official founding of the new city. Rama I gave his new capital a grand ceremonial name: Krung Thep Maha Nakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit. The longest place-name in the world, it translates as: “The City of Angels, the Great City, the Eternal Jewel City, the Impregnable City