No More Learning

Pegu was burnt. Bayinnaung's palace, his radiant buildings decked
with the spoil of conquered kings, went up in flames. It was a pitiful
ending. The misery in lower Burma beggared description : the bodies
of those who died of wounds or starvation filled the rivers and im-
peded the passage of boats, and men ate human flesh.
The country south of Martaban paid homage to Ayuthia. Burma
was once more a series of petty states, held by princes of the royal
house. The best was the prince of Ava; a son of Bayinnaung, he
reduced upper Burma and the Shan States; he induced China to
extradite the fugitive Bhamo sawbwa, and the Chinese themselves
admit that after 1628 Burma sent no more "tribute" missions. His
son Anaukpetlun (1605-28), having the north on which to draw for
levies, found little difficulty in annexing the depopulated land of
lower Burma. In 1607 he took Prome. In 1610 he took Toungoo,
carrying home to Ava the Ceylon Tooth and begging bowl, two-thirds
of the cattle, and many people, including all who had been deported
from Pegu, Prome and Ava.
De Brito (p. 478) had made himself independent at Syriam,
defeating all attacks whether by his old Arakanese master or by other
chiefs. He had a hundred Portuguese, some negro and Indian slaves,
and the Talaings who came in from the neighbourhood. He was
liked, because he gave folk settled government. He had several ships
cruising round the coast to prevent merchant vessels from putting
in save at Syriam, where he could make them pay customs duty.
He became so successful that the Portuguese viceroy at Goa acknow-
ledged him as official Portuguese governor of Syriam. But he con-
tinued to do as he pleased, and he did wrong in pillaging pagodas.
He would scrape the gold off images and beat it into gold-leaf for
sale to pilgrims; and he melted down some of the beautiful bronze
bells at the Shwedagon to save himself the expense of_importing
bronze to make cannon. He was allied to Martaban and Toungoo.
In 1613 Anaukpetlun advanced on Syriam. Success had made
De Brito so careless that he had allowed himself to run out of powder
when the king arrived with 12,000 men. However, the stockade was
strong and the defenders beat off all attacks with boiling oil.
Natshinnaung, the fallen prince of Toungoo and cousin to the king,
was inside, having taken refuge with De Brito. The king especially
desired to capture him, and offered De Brito friendship if he would
surrender him. But De Brito replied: “We Portuguese keep faith.
1 Burney, “Wars between Burma and China", in Journal Asiatic Society of
Bengal, 1837.


## p. 495 (#535) ############################################

DE BRITO
495
I have given my word to Natshinnaung and do not break it. ” The
king cut off a prisoner's ears and sent him to De Brito saying: "Look
at this, and consider whether it will pay thee to harbour mine enemy. "
But De Brito never wavered. Once, when all the Portuguese were
in church, the Burmese broke into the stockade, but the Portuguese
came rushing out and none of the Burmese escaped alive. At the
end of six weeks the Burmese mined the stockade and managed to
pull out two of the posts; they poured in and captured the town.
The king offered the two leaders their lives if they would beg pardon,
but they refused, Natshinnaung saying: "You can kill my body, but
my soul never. De Brito and I are brothers for we have entered into
the thwethauk (p. 490) bloodbond. We have lived one life. Let us
die one death. ” His wish was granted. De Brito was crucified and
lingered three days. Perhaps he was still alive when some Portuguese
relief ships arrived but went back, seeing that the town had fallen.
The Portuguese, with Eurasians, women, and children, a total of
400, were enslaved and sent to live in the Shwebo villages called,
after them, bayingyi (feringhi) villages. They were used as hereditary
gunners to the king and were in charge of such cannon as he possessed.
Their numbers were occasionally increased, as every white man who
came into the power of the Burmese was sent there (p. 506), and by
1800 their descendants numbered two thousand, including women
and children. Their chaplains were Goanese until 1721, when Italian
Barnabites founded the European mission.
From about 1627 the Dutch, from 1647 the English, East India
Companies had branches in Burma under junior representatives.
These branches were closed from time to time, and, although profits
were occasionally considerable, the disturbed state of the country
made steady trade impossible. Both factories were at Syriam, and
in 1677 the Dutch finally withdrew. ?
Anaukpetlun tried to take Tenasserim, but the Siamese, aided by
forty Portuguese, drove him off with heavy loss. He regained control
down to Chiengmai and to Ye in Moulmein district. His methods
were those of Nandabayin, and of many an energetic Burmese king.
His people in delighted terror said that he had only to wave his sword
and the tide would stop. Yet outside his palace at Pegu there hung
a bell with an inscription in Burmese and Talaing calling on all who
had a grievance to strike the bell and he would hear (p. 479).
When in his palace on the west side of the river at Pegu he detected
his son Minredeippa in a love intrigue with one of the harem ladies,
and told him he deserved roasting alive. Such punishment was not
unusual, and Minredeippa, fearing it would really be inflicted, col.
1 Faria y Sousa (Stevens), The Portuguese Asia, m, 191; Pawtugi Yazawin
and Furnivall, “A Forgotten Chronicle", in Journal Burma Research Society,
1912; ibid. 1926, pp. 101 sqq. ; Hmannan, 1, 118; Dinnyawadi Yazawinthit, p. 210.
7 Hall, Early English Intercourse with Burma.


## p. 496 (#536) ############################################

496
BURMA (1531-1782)
lected some friends, entered the king's room at night, and did him
to death.
At once the ministers summoned a general assembly of the court.
Early action was necessary, and they took it: they elected the parri-
cide to the throne. Their reasoning was that the king's brothers, his
natural successors, were away campaigning in the Shan States-at
one time they had gone as far as Kenghung north-east of Kengtung-
and the kingdom would be in turmoil before they could be recalled.
Public morality apart, the reasoning was invalid, for young Minre-
deippa had not the wit to hold a throne, whereas his two uncles were
mature men, each in command of an army, and the news reached
them easily in nine days. So far from avoiding disorder, the court's
decision caused it. The country respected the uncles, for they were
men of authority; it knew nothing of Minredeippa, and half a dozen
governors took the opportunity to revolt. Deprived of support from
lower Burma, the two uncles had to waste sixteen months reducing
the north country. Meanwhile they seized the families of the upper
Burma companies in the palace guard, making the fact known in
Pegu, and thus shaking the allegiance of Minredeippa's guards. He
had not the courage to leave his palace and attack them. Town after
town in upper Burma fell to them, and when they surrounded Ava,
Minredeippa, foreseeing their success, decided to flee to Arakan; but
his own followers, in disgust at his cowardice and tyranny, seized
him and sent a deputation to Ava asking Thalun, one of the uncles,
to take the throne. He did so, and immediately on arriving in Pegu
executed Minredeippa, sternly rejecting his plea to be allowed to
become a monk.
Thalun (1629–48) reigned with the help of his brother until the
latter's death some years later. His coronation was scarcely over
when Talaings rushed the palace; they were driven out, fled to
Moulmein, and held it for some time before they migrated to Siam
in large numbers. He moved the capital back to Ava and there it
stayed. The Delta had lost its advantages now that the idea of
attacking Ayuthia was dead, and Pegu ceased to be a seaport when,
about 1600, the silting up of the river was complete. The proper site
to move to was Syriam, but the court did not realise that the country's
future lay on the sea coast (p. 513). The return to Ava signified the
abandonment of Tabinshwehti's dream of a national kingship. The
attempted union with the Talaings had failed, and the court relapsed
into its tribal homeland, upper Burma.
The return to upper Burma restored Kyaukse to the importance
it had lost so long as the kingship was situated among the Delta rice
fields. Instead of dedicating prisoners of war as slaves to pagodas,
Thalun found a new use for them : he settled them as tenants at
Kyaukse, where their families supplied labour for the canals and
they themselves served in the guard at court.


## p. 497 (#537) ############################################

DOMESDAY BOOK
497
Indeed Thalun must rank as one of the best kings. The wars of
his predecessors left the country bloodless for a century. He kept the
peace and reorganised the administration. He may not have created,
but at least he revived the old village and district administration
which had been shattered; and he placed it on record in the great
revenue inquest of 1638, the first in Burmese history. None of the
record has been found, but probably it resembled Bodawpaya's 1784
inquest 1 and consisted of the sworn statements of every village head-
man throughout the country as to the number of people in his village,
the area of cultivated land, the crops grown, the revenue paid, etc.
How destructive was the disorder which overwhelmed Burma is
shown by the history of the Shwesettaw shrine in the Minbu district.
It is one of the holiest imaginable, containing two of Buddha's reputed
footprints. Yet, during the depopulation caused by the Siamese wars,
so little was the intercourse with Arakan over the An Pass, the
approach to which runs through Shwesettaw, that even this famous
spot was forgotten. In 1638 a party of monks sent by the king suc-
ceeded in finding the footprints amid the jungle which enveloped
them, and the shrine was restored. 2
Thalun's minister Kaingsa Manu compiled the Manusarashwemin
or Maharaja dhammathat, the first law book written in Burmese instead
of Pali. It is based on Bayinnaung's compilations (p. 490) and on
the still earlier Talaing dhammathats, but it substitutes Burmese ideas
on, for instance, inheritance, for theirs, which are largely Hindu.
Thalun's principal pagoda is the Yazamanisula (Kaunghmudaw)
(
at Sagaing, of Cingalese pattern; here he enshrined the Ceylon Tooth
and begging bowl (p. 494), dedicating Shan slaves from Chiengmai
and elsewhere.
His son Pindale (1648–61) built the Ngatatkyi pagoda, Sagaing
district, containing a very large sitting Buddha.
When the Ming dynasty of China was overthrown, Yung-li, the
last Ming emperor, tried to maintain himself in Yünnan. But in
1658 he was defeated and fled to Bhamo with his family and seven
hundred followers. He gave the Bhamo sawbwa 100 viss (1 viss =
3. 65 lb. ) of gold to send the king with a petition asking leave to live
in Burma, and the king permitted him to live at Sagaing with his
followers.
A plague of freebooter armies broke out in China during the change
of dynasty. They swarmed over the provinces but, finding by bitter
experience that it did not pay to plunder the Manchus, the new
conquerors of China, they looked for easier prey. They occupied
Mone and Yawnghwe and ravaged up to Ava, plundering the vil-
lages, killing men, carrying off women and burning monasteries,
while the monks fled in terror to the woods. They could not take
Ava, for it was a walled town, and one of their leaders was even
1 Harvey, History of Burma, p. 269.
2 Duroiselle, Notes on the Ancient Geography of Burma
32


## p. 498 (#538) ############################################

498
BURMA (1531-1782)
killed by a shot from the feringhi gunners from the wall. But for
the next three years they ravaged upper Burma from Yawnghwe,
occupying Wundwin in Meiktila district, raiding Pagan, defeating
every army, and even capturing some of the princes.
The king ruled over much the same area as Bayinnaung and had
the same resources at his disposal. Bayinnaung would have found
a speedy remedy; he would have marched with a large force and
taken such reprisals that no Chinaman would have dared show his
face inside the frontier for a generation. But the king was spiritless
and commanded no following outside his homeland.
He did indeed send for a levy of 3000 men from Martaban, but
the Talaings had no heart in the business and deserted on the march.
The punishment for desertion was burning alive in batches. Their
indignant kinsmen rose, fired Martaban, drove the Burmese out, and
went off into Siam, 6000 souls in all, including families and prisoners.
The frontier guards reported to the king of Siam, who sent lords
(smim) to greet them, men of their own race who had long since
settled in Siam. He granted gracious audience to their eleven leaders
in the palace at Ayuthia, and allotted them lands.
The Talaings had fled into Siam because they could not stand
aganst Burmese vengeance. Thus, though there is some excuse for
the king's failure to get levies from the Delta, there is none for his
failure to get its rice, which could easily have been brought upstream.
He needed that rice, for Kyaukse, the granary of upper Burma, was
in the hands of the Chinese.
But he sat with folded hands while they roamed the land at will,
the crops could not be sown, the city granaries ran low, and the
guards and the palace staff were plunged into mourning by the
massacre of their kinsmen in the villages. The guards could get no
food to eat, and finally they found that the royal concubines had
cornered what rice there was and were selling it at iniquitous prices.
The king exercised no control and when they appealed to him he
mournfully said he could not help them. They approached his
brother Pye, who at once marched on the palace. Hearing the drums,
the king sent eunuchs to see what was happening. They told him,
and he went to hide while the queen with her son aged eight and
grandson aged four remained on the couch of state. Pye and his
men entered the palace cutting down some twenty men and women.
Pye said: "Brother, I wish thee no harm, but these things cannot
be. Many a time have the ministers called me, and now I must do
as they say. " The queen entreated him, saying: "Be king but spare
our lives. We will end our days in religion. Let the children become
monks. ” But Pye shook his head, saying : "When have our families
been monks? They will only throw off the robe. Yet will I do you
no harm, remembering the oath of brotherly love I took to our
father. ” He kept them in a royal house, sending them food daily.
But after a few weeks the court said: "There cannot be two suns in
1


## p. 499 (#539) ############################################

YUNG-LI
499
the sky', and he drowned the king, queen and their son and grand-
son in the Chindwin river.
Pye (1661-72) was troubled in heart over these terrible events and
after summoning the monks and listening to the scriptures he said to
them : "I had no wish to be king but the ministers and captains in-
sisted that they had no refuge but me. Even as the Lord himself is
bound by his clergy, so must I hearken to the voice of my people. ”
The monks did not gainsay him, for he spoke the truth. They repre-
sented the public conscience, and every good king strove to win their
approval.
Pye stopped profiteering among the harem women, so that his
guards did not have to go without food for three days at a time as
under his predecessor. But otherwise his success was not perceptibly
greater. The Siamese, with Martaban, Tavoy and Chiengmai levies
in their army, raided Syriam and Pegu, carrying off the population in
crowds. ? The Chinese ravages continued with undiminished intensity.
Yung-li and his followers were helpless fugitives who only wished
to be left in peace. But the court believed them to be implicated in
the Chinese ravages, and summoned the followers to the Tupayon
pagoda at Sagaing intending to split them into small parties and
scatter them in distant villages. When they were being led away
from the pagoda, the Chinese grew frightened and, though unarmed,
resisted; they were slain to a man. Yung-li apologised pitifully
saying he was sure they were wrong.
In time, the Chinese freebooters wore themselves out and the iron
hand of the Manchu dynasty fell on the remnants. In 1662 the Yünnan
viceroy came with 20,000 men and, halting at Aungbinle in Mandalay
district, he sent a herald summoning the king to surrender Yung-li
or take the consequences. This was the pass to which things had come
through lack of judgment in admitting Yung-li and lack of manhood
in repelling the Chinese. The king called a council. He pointed out
that there were precedents to show that fugitives ought to be sur-
rendered and accordingly Yung-li must be given up. The ministers
agreed and, disregarding the solemn fact that Yung-li had been
admitted to allegiance, they delivered him up to meet his doom.
The reigns of Narawara (1672–73), Minrekyawdin (1673-98), Sane
(1698-1714), and Taninganwe (1714-33), were uneventful save for
the usual rebellions and frontier raids. When the Ava palace was
rebuilt in 1676, human victims were buried as a foundation sacrifice. "
In 1721 two Italian priests came to Ava and founded the Catholic
1 For the taboo on shedding royal blood, and the convention whereby princes
were drowned, see Harvey, History of Burma, p. 339.
2 S. Smith, History of Siam, 1657-1767, pp. 22-30.
3 See p. 494, vol. III, . 547, and vol. v, p. 558.
4 Hmannan, ni, 261-82; Warry, Précis; Parker, Précis; and his "Letters from
a Chinese Empress", in Contemporary Review, 1912; Anderson, Expedition to
western Yünnan, pp. 19-20; Cordier, Histoire générale de la Chine, III, 240-4.
* See also vol. II, p. 551, and p. 509 below and Harvey, History of Burma, p. 320.
3


## p. 500 (#540) ############################################

500
BURMA (1531-1782)
Mission;' hitherto the only clergy in the country had been the
Goanese chaplains of the feringhi villages (p. 495), whose character
may be inferred from the fact that it was largely at their instigation
that two devoted priests of the Société des Missions Etrangères de
Paris were martyred in 1693. The Jatapon, a collection of royal
horoscopes, was compiled about 1680; it is of high chronolgical
value as its dates are more reliable than those of the chronicles. In
1724 Nga Kala compiled the Yazawwingyi chronicle; it is an im-
portant work, based on earlier sources, and similarly large portions of
its text are incorporated in the Hmannan chronicle. European trade
centred in Siam and Malaya at places such as Tenasserim 2 (p. 488)
which, save under Bayinnaung (1551-81), was in Siamese hands till
1760. The Portuguese ceased to count after 1641, when they were
expelled from Malacca by the Dutch, but there is still a colony of
their descendants, with high-sounding names they cannot pronounce,
round the Catholic church at Mergui. The merchants of Golconda
carried the India trade thither; the king of Siam and his minister,
Phaulkon, a Greek, wishing to oust them and get the carrying trade
for their own ships, employed English interlopers. Thus Burneby
figures as governor of Mergui among the seven commissioners ap-
pointed by the king of Siam in 1686 to administer the port and pro-
vince, and Samuel White, another of the commissioners, was port
officer 1683–87. But the East India Company depended for its security
on the king of Golconda, and persuaded its principal shareholder,
James II, to claim Mergui in 1687. White outwardly professed com-
pliance while secretly preparing to resist, but he had betrayed his
Siamese employers as well as the East India Company, and the
townsfolk now rose against him as well as against James II's frigate,
drove them both out and massacred sixty other English who were
ashore. James II was also actuated by a desire to forestall Louis XIV.
Four companies of French infantry built a fort and garrisoned Mergui
during 1688 by arrangement with the king of Siam, who played off
the European nations against each other. The name French Bay,
on the eastern side of King Island, the largest island in the Mergui
group, commemorates the fact that it was for a few years about this
time the rendezvous of French warships. With the death of the
Siamese king and the murder of Phaulkon in 1688, the Siamese ceased
to favour the French, and in any case the French before long had no
energy to spare for the farther east. 3
Alter 1687 the English continued to trade in Mergui.
The Dutch
remained predominant; they had the tin monopoly but based their
1 Purchas his Pilgrimage or Relations of the world, p. 507; Herbert, Some
years travels into Africa and Asia, p. 318; Launay, Mémorial de la Société des
Missions Etrangères, II, 274, 332; Hamilton, New Account of East Indies, II, 63;
Bigandet, History of the Catholic Burmese Mission. 2 See vol. II, p. 556.
3 Furnivall, From China to Peru; and his "Samuel White, Port Omicer of
Mergui", in Journal Burma Research Society, 1917; Anderson, English Inter-
course with Siam; Collis, Siamese White.


## p. 501 (#541) ############################################

MARINERS ENSLAVED
601
trade on Malacca, and Mergui declined. Sea piracy was rife every-
where, some of the worst rogues being renegade Dutchmen.
The French Compagnie des Indes had a branch at Syriam in 1688;
its existence continued intermittently for nearly a century. The
Burmese tried to make the English re-establish the branches which
had been closed for many years (p. 495); as their efforts failed, they
seized St Antony and St Nicholas, a ship affiliated to the English,
which put into Syriam for wood and water in 1692. Thereupon gov-
ernor Higginson of Madras consented to re-establish private trade,
but a resident chief was not appointed to Syriam till 1722. The imports
were firearms for the Burmese government, piece-goods, hats and
other European wares, areca, and coconuts from the Nicobars; the
exports were ivory, lac, pepper, cardamum, beeswax, fur, cutch, large
quantities of raw cotton and silk, together with such jewels, silver,
lead, copper, iron, tin and earth-oil as could be got in spite of the
highly protectionist system of the Burmese, which prohibited the
export of precious metal, jewels, rice, and indeed of most commodities.
Moreover, they were allowed to use as much teak as they liked for
building ships at Syriam, and they built many, the favourite type
being brigantines of 40-50 tons.
The seizure of a ship was in accordance with Burmese customary
law, which gave the king absolute rights over everything in his
dominions. Seafaring men avoided Burmese ports. Although a ship-
master never pays his crew all the wages due to them before letting
them go ashore in a foreign port, and naval regulations forbid it,
the governor of Syriam would insist on crews being paid in full before
landing, in order that he might encourage them to desert. If a sailor
married a woman of the country, the governor would claim him as
a Burmese subject, alleging that the husband takes the wife's
nationality. If a ship was driven onto the coast by weather, the
Burmese confiscated her and enslaved the crew, arguing that under
their law anyone who saved another from drowning had the right
to possess him as a slave. Nay, if a ship merely touched at a Burmese
port for water, without being expressly consigned there, she was
enslaved on the same reasoning. But here, as in so much else, the
harshness of the rulers was mitigated by the humanity of the monks :
if the distressed mariner wandered into a monastery, he was safe,
for the monks would tend his wounds, feed and clothe him, and send
him as if in sanctuary with letters of commendation from monastery
to monastery till he could reach Syriam, there to await the chance
of some passing ship. 3
Ruling a poor and thinly populated country, the king regarded
1 Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes (1782), II, 43-53; (1806), m, 40-43; Cordier,
Le France en Chine, 1, p. xviii, and Historique abrégé, p. 6.
2 Year 1755, Dalrymple, Oriental Repertory, I, 191; year 1781, Sonneral,
Voyage aux Indes (1806), III, 49; year 1782, Cordier, "Les Français en Birma-
nie", in T'oung Pao (1890), pp. 199, 205; year 1808, Sangermano, Burmese
Empire, p. 61. 8 Year 1727, Hamilton, New Account of East Indies, 0, 62.


## p. 502 (#542) ############################################

502
BURMA (1531-1782)
.
captives as a form of wealth. Any foreigner residing in the country
was not merely allowed but publicly encouraged to take a temporary
wife for the period of his stay; he had to pay her off before leaving,
and never under any circumstances could he take his female children
out of the country, though he might, on heavy payment, take his
male children (p. 480); every ship on arrival was carefully searched
for women, and if, on leaving, it contained one woman more than
it did on arrival, that ship was seized and the crew enslaved : women
could breed subjects for the king and they were not allowed to
emigrate.
Mahadammayaza-dipati (1733–52). Manipur had sent propitiatory
tribute to Bayinnaung (1551–81) but thereafter went her own way,
and occasionally made raids. The country bred famous ponies; in
;
those days every man had two or three, and polo, played forty a side
throughout the villages, produced a race of horsemen. Under their
raja, Gharib Nawaz (1714—54), the Manipuri raiders became a terror;
from 1724 till his death they came nearly every other year sweeping
the country up to Ava and carrying off loot, cattle and thousands of
people. Once they massacred two-thirds of a royal army including
the commander, who was drunk. In 1738 they burnt every house and
monastery under the walls of Ava and stormed the stockade built to
protect the Kaunghmudaw pagoda, slaughtering the garrison like
cattle in a pen and killing a minister of the Hluttaw council. They
had recently been converted to Hinduism by preachers who said that
if they bathed in the Irrawaddy river at Sagaing all blessedness would
attend them. In 1744 their chief Brahman actually came to Ava to
convert the Golden Palace, but after staying a month he fell ill and
died, whereupon his suite of Brahmans returned home. 3
Mahadammayaza-dipati, king of Burma, angered at his commanders'
failure to repel the Manipuris, used to expose them in the sun with a
sword on their necks, saying: "If a failure like this comes to my
golden ears again I will chastise you with my sword. ” Neither he nor
his predecessors since 1648 ever took the field in person. In short, the
kingdom was doomed. Unlike the mass of their subjects, the kings
were polygamous and although, to preserve the fiction of an undiluted
succession, the chief queen had to be the reigning king's half-sister,
the heir was often not her son, or even the son of a queen, but any
son who could intrigue or massacre his way to power. No dynasty
lasted three centuries or preserved its vigour for three generations.
1 Year 1592, Linschoten, Voyage to East Indies, I, 98; year 1727, Hamilton,
New Account of East Indies, II, 51-3; year 1782, Cordier, "Les Français en
Birmanie”, in Toung Pao (1890), p. 190 and (1891), p. 25; year 1795, Symes,
Embassy to Ava, p. 329. Foreigners objected, but even in the 1826 treaty the
victorious English could not get the restriction removed, Crawfurd, Embassy
to Ava, 11, Appendix, p. 14.
2 Pemberton, Report on Eastern Frontier, p. 81.
8 Hmannan, m, 380, 386.


## p. 503 (#543) ############################################

603
END OF AVA
The kingship was now like overripe fruit, ready to fall at the first
touch. A crop of minlaung (pretenders) sprang up. Dacoity was
rampant. A colony of Gwel (i. e. Wa tribesmen) at Okpo, Mandalay
district, were joined by captives at Madaya near by, built a stockade,
and lorded it over the district, plundering whom they pleased. People
took to migrating in hundreds to Arakan, complaining of drunkenness
in the palace and famine in the villages.
For a century the delta had given little trouble because the Talaings
took time to recover from the depopulation caused by Bayinnaung's
wars. But now that they had recovered, and repeopled the wilder-
ness, trouble began. Provoked by grinding taxation-even the looms
of old women were taxed3—they massacred the Burmese at Pegu,
Syriam and Martaban and set up as king Smim Htaw Buddhaketi
(1740-47), a monk who was a poor relation of the king of Ava. It
was necessary for him to have a white elephant in order to prove
himself a proper king, but as he spent too long in the jungles searching
for one and would not attend to state affairs, he was replaced by his
father-in-law Binnya Dala (1747–57). The Talaings held Prome and
Toungoo and all the country to the south, and for years used to go
raiding up the river to Ava with many thousands of men. They
could not take Ava as it was a walled town,
The Burmese troops did little but run away. A few years later
the same men were carrying all before them because they had found
leaders; those leaders were there now, waiting to be used, but an
effete despotism had not the means of selecting them.
As the years passed, the raids resulted in the ruin of agriculture
in upper Burma. Feeling unsafe, men deserted their fields, and
Talaings or dacoits burnt what little crop was left. The last hope of
replenishing the royal granaries vanished when the Talaings occupied
the Kyaukse canals. They then surrounded Ava; after a siege of
some months, it starved; the Talaings were on the point of going
home when they learnt this from deserters, and in April, 1752, they
forced their way into the outer city. Two days later the inner city
(p. 513) opened its gates; the Talaing yuvaraja (crown prince) rode
to the palace in state, dismounted and entered barefoot; he found
the king in a great hall surrounded by his women, and greeted him
courteously; 4 the king replied : "In this mortal life there are happi.
ness and woe. This is the hour of my woe. Take me and do with me
as thou wilt, but spare my people. " The Talaings seized the regalia,
the royal treasures and the list of citizens, burnt the city to the
ground, left a strong garrison, and returned with the captive king,
court and people to Pegu.
They returned for fear of a Siamese attack on Martaban. They
1 Harvey, “Gwe", in Journal Burma Research Society, 1925.
2 Dinnyawadi Yazawinthit, pp. 230-4.
8 Sayadaw Athwa, II, 139.
· Wood, Précis.


## p. 504 (#544) ############################################

501
BURMA (1531-1782)
did not penetrate north of Ava, as they had not enough men; they
had overthrown the dynasty which, founded by Tabinshwehti, and
known as the Toungoo dynasty, had lasted 221 years, but they had
not subjected the Burmese people.
>
THE ALAUNGPAYA DYNASTY (1752-1885)
Alaungpaya (1752-60) was born in 1714 at Shwebo (Moksobomyo,
"Town of the Hunter Chief''), a village of 300 houses. Many of his
followers were hunters, but he himself belonged to a better class, the
landed gentry as it were; for generations his family had been
myothugyis (major village headmen), and in later days he even
claimed descent from the fifteenth-century Ava chiefs. The anarchy
of the last few years led him and many another jungle chief to
stockade their villages. Forty-six villages joined him, and between
them they raised a few rusty muskets.
When Ava fell he was ready. The Talaings sent small detachments
to administer thissa-ye, the holy water of allegiance. One of these
came towards Shwebo. Alaungpaya's father made ready to pay
homage and offer half his property, saying: "We can do nothing.
The Talaing army is too strong. We shall simply be overwhelmed.
We may as well give in. ” “No,” said Alaungpaya, “when fighting
for your country it matters little whether you are few or many. What
does matter is that your comrades have true hearts and strong arms. "
He went out and met those Talaings in the scrub jungle south of
Halin. They got no homage; only such as were lucky got away with
their lives.
They came back in a large detachment with orders to spare not
even infants in the cradle. Alaungpaya built a state hut and sent
ten horsemen to conduct them respectfully to it. But they were
conducted along a hollow road and in the bushes on each side lay
his musket men. The Talaings never reached that hut. A bare half
dozen reached Ava alive to tell the tale.
Again they came back, several thousand strong this time, to extir-
pate Shwebo once and for all; but as they came without cannon the
assault naturally failed and they had to undertake a siege. One night
Alaungpaya burst out at the head of a general sortie. It was not a
defeat but a rout. Word passed along the Burmese pursuers that men
had seen Myinbyushin Nat, the spirit rider of the White Horse,?
fighting on their side. The Talaings jumped into boats and, without
stopping to report at Ava, fled straight home down the river.
The news spread. A dozen legends gathered round his name.
Officers and men from the disbanded palace guard joined him with
1 For thissa-ye, see Harvey, History of Burma, p. 339.
2 Grant Brown, “Lady of the Weir", in Journal Royal Asiatic Society, 1916,
pp. 492-3; Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, part a, vol. I, p. 518.
2


## p. 505 (#545) ############################################

THE GREAT PRETENDER
505
such muskets as they had managed to keep. From half the villages
of upper Burma lads of spirit came trooping in to take service under
the new leader. Even the greater men, some of whom could trace
royal blood and themselves had hopes as minlaungs (pretenders),
decided to serve under him.
By the end of 1753 he had massacred the Gwes of Madaya-Okpo
(p. 503), the survivors fleeing into the Shan States, and so harried
the Talaings that they evacuated Ava. In 1754 the Talaings, having
discovered a plot at Pegu, executed the captive Ava king; this so
infuriated the Burmese deportees in the delta that they rose wholesale
and seized Prome. Alaungpaya wrote telling them to hold out and
promising the governorship of a district to any Burman who could
make that district revolt against the Talaings. Finally he drove the
Talaing besiegers away from Prome, and by 1755 he had annexed
the country down to Lunhse (Kudut) in Henzada district, and to
Rangoon; Lunhse he named Myanaung, "Speedy Victory”, and Dagon
Rangoon, "End of Strife”. He went in procession with his great officers
and returned solemn thanks at the Shwedagon for his victories.
In the fighting of a decade previously, when the Talaings were
expelling the Burmese from the delta, the East India Company's
buildings at Rangoon had been burnt to the ground. Thereupon the
English avoided the mainland and in 1753 occupied Negrais Island,
which was uninhabited save by fishermen, erecting a factory, with
moat, glacis, walls and cannon. The French remained at Syriam and
declared for the Talaings. The English were inclining towards the
Burmese when Alaungpaya captured Rangoon; finding three English
ships in the port, he seized their cannon as a matter of course but,
hoping to enter into an agrement with them and thus secure more
numerous cannon, he allowed the protest of Jackson, the captain of
the ships, H. E. I. CE's snow Arcot, and released the cannon. He then
left for Shwebo, and the Talaings tried to recapture Rangoon. They
bombarded it with the help of French ships, and finding Jackson ill
ashore they put a prize crew on the Arcot and made her take part
in the bombardment. Their attack failed and they would not let
Jackson sail away till he had surrendered five of his cannon, pro-
bably nine pounders. The news of this reached Alaungpaya just
when he was receiving the Company's envoy, Captain Baker, at
Shwebo; he accepted Baker's repudiation, without believing it, and
continued the negotiations, which ended in 1757 with an agreement
whereby, in return for 700 lb. of powder, and one twelve pounder,
annually, he ceded Negrais and a site at Bassein, in perpetuity, with
the right to erect fortifications. 1
Alaungpaya's advances in the delta involved heavy fighting not
only on land but also on water; both sides had hundreds of great
1 Dalrymple, Oriental Repertory, I, 133-226.


## p. 506 (#546) ############################################

506
BURMA (1531-1782)
war-canoes, and these, driven by sixty paddles, would ram with
terrific effect. On land his hardest task was yet to come, for his men
were only a semi-armed mass levy, and so far he had not been con-
fronted with a walled town. Moreover, Dupleix had regarded Syriam
as his chief shipbuilding depot, and French ships lay in the river,
defending the town. Alaungpaya invested it in 1755 but had to wait
a year for starvation to do its work. In July, 1756, finding the de-
fenders weak with hunger, he called for volunteers, fed them for
days in his presence, and gave them leather helmets and lacquer
armour. They numbered ninety-three and are known as the Golden
Company. On the appointed night, the Burmese camp held a festival
with drums and music. The sound, floating up to the Talaing city
on the hill, induced the watchers to relax their vigilance. The Golden
Company found their way over the walls, cut down the guards, and
opened the gates. The Burmese poured in, and the town was theirs.
To Alaungpaya's men from upper Burma it was a veritable Eldorado,
and they glutted themselves with mirrors, candlesticks, lamps, chairs,
clocks, and other European wonders. He made a heap of silver and
let the survivors of the Golden Company take away as much as they
could carry.
Bruno, the French agent at Syriam, had written to Pondicherry
for help. Two ships, Fleury and Galathée, came. They arrived after
the town had fallen and, knowing nothing, came up the river under
a Burmese pilot who, under Alaungpaya's orders, stranded them;
fire-rafts sealed their fate. Bruno was roasted alive; the ships' officers,
numbering twelve and being gentlemen of quality, were beheaded.
The French were under no obligations to Alaungpaya, and as the
Talaing state which they were helping was actually in existence they
were entitled to treatment as prisoners of war. But it was customary
among the races of Indo-China to give no quarter save to those they
carried off into slavery, and Alaungpaya had to issue special orders 1
to prevent the killing, after capture, of Burmans and Shans whom
the Talaings had taken and compelled to fight for them. Beheading
was a merciful death, granted as a favour to officer prisoners.
The two ships contained thirty-five cannon (twenty-four pounders),
five field guns, 1300 muskets, and ammunition. These were a godsend
to Alaungpaya, and it was largely on their account that he gave the
crews, over 200 men, their lives : white gunners were too valuable to
execute. They were reasonably treated and given Burmese wives,
some of them became captains of the guard; the rest were a corps
d'élite who played no small part in major actions, and when too old
to follow the armies they were allowed to retire in the feringhi
villages of Shwebo district (p. 495): their descendants are indistin-
guishable from the surrounding population save by their religion
and occasionally by the colour of their eyes.
1 Konbaungset, p. 185.


## p. 507 (#547) ############################################

TALAINGS ANNIHILATED
507
Thus, until the gunners lost their man-of-war smartness, the Bur-
mese had some good artillery. Alaungpaya had indeed already a
number of cannon, mostly taken from the Talaings, but some of them
were two hundred years old and the best of them was the gun used
at Prome in 1754. This was a three pounder and it was the pride
of the day, because when fired it went off, and when it went off it
was the enemy that it hit, and the enemy whom it hit died; because
of these things, it was coated with gold leaf, and men made offerings
of spirit to it, reverently perfuming it with scents and wrapping it in
fine raiment. Alaungpaya was head of the church, but when he
came to possess French gunners, he was not responsible for their
souls, as they were unbelievers and it was their own concern if they
chose to drink damnation. Besides, theologically speaking he did
not countenance their use of intoxicants; he merely permitted the
offering of spirits to the Gun Spirit, and the slaves of the Gun Spirit
happened to consume the offering.
Alaungpaya burnt Syriam to the ground and henceforward its
importance ceases. He made Rangoon the port of Burma, enlarging
the stockade and appointing a senior governor. In 1756-57 he
advanced on Pegu by land and water while a second army, mainly
of Shan levies, moved towards it from Toungoo. His advance was
slow, with grim losses, for the Talaings were now fighting literally
with their backs to the wall and they were still superior in firearms,
mainly jingals, a rough iron tube mounted on a bamboo tripod and
throwing a one-pound ball. He left pots of poisoned intoxicants
where the Talaings would find them, and so killed many. They
made desperate stands in forty stockades south of the city, especially
near Mokkainggyi, at Kyaikpadaing and Zenyaungbin (Nyaungbin).
At Zenyaungbin they captured many of Alaungpaya's jingals and
turned them against him; it was a hornet's nest which he captured
only by flinging in the Golden Company of Syriam, increased to three
hundred; these pressed on through a hail of lead shouting "Shwe.
botha! ”, forced an entrance, and flung open the gate to their comrades.
Finally the Burmese, devastating the country and deporting the
population, closed around. A monastery at Sidi still shows a bell
cast by Alaungpaya; he resided there, at the little fort of Zetuwadi,
and was nearly driven out one night by some picked Talaings under
the famous Talaban. But such efforts were vain. The Burmese,
aided by their French artillery, and by war-boats which flung off the
Talaings' fire-rafts, completed their lines round the doomed city.
The city starved. The Talaings sent monks asking for terms, and
their king offered to become Alaungpaya's vassal. Alaungpaya re-
plied that they had nothing to fear, for-it is the ambition of every
great Buddhist king to become a Buddha-he was a divine incarna-
>
1 Konbaungset, pp. 110-12.
2 Konbaungset, p. 198.


## p. 508 (#548) ############################################

508
BURMA (1531–1782)
tion; and he gave the envoys two bunches of orchids, saying one was
for offering, the other for adornment. The Talaings breathed more
freeiy.