Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
city-state with missionaries in an attempt to convert the royal family and the people to
Roman Catholicism. In what became known as the Siamese Revolution of 1688, the com-
mander of the royal elephant corps, Phra Phetracha, staged a coup d'état and the king was
arrested. Narai, who was already gravely ill, died a few weeks later. Phetracha became king.
Phaulkon was beheaded. The Siamese then set to dislodge the French, who left the Thon-
buri fort and grouped at their new fortification on the open, swampy ground of the east-
ern bank. Cannon balls were hurled across the river at the French, and their fortress was
besieged for four months. Eventually the French were ejected from the country, and aside
from the ever-present Portuguese, who had largely intermingled with the local population,
and a small number of Dutch traders, who had supplied material help, other European na-
tions were no longer as welcome as they once had been.
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 con-
sequence many had become powerful in their own right and less inclined to be subser-
vient 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 suc-
cession 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 Ay-
utthaya. 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.
