How were the Burmese able to sack Ayutthaya when it was one of the wealthiest and most powerful cities in Asia at the time?
Upvote:-1
the Thai lakorn/historical drama Sri Ayodhaya
It's more lakorn and a LOT of historical propaganda rather than a historical drama, to be honest.
and in one episode, this one professor said that Ayutthaya was an incredibly wealthy and powerful kingdom
All incredibly wealthy and powerful kingdoms were eventually defeated.
The kingdoms of Ayutthaya, before that Sukhothai, and after that Siam were perpetually at war with the Burmese. Sometimes the Burmese won, sometimes the (now) Thais. Even today border raids by the Tatmadaw or Burmese army happen. Not very often, and the last couple of years none at all. But they happened and possibly/probably will happen again. Ask any Thai, they rarely talk favorably about the Burmese.
At the end of Ayutthaya the last king, king Ekkhathat, was not a very strong man. The court was divided into many factions. Wikipedia says there was a bloody struggle between princes over power. Something that almost certainly will not show up on the Thai version, as this is awfully close to lèse-majesté in Thailand...
So the king was not a powerful man, he got to rule after a bloody struggle over the throne. He had to be careful not to be murdered by his courtiers or family. Then the Burmese appear. At that time the Burmese army was at the peak of its strength, with a very strong and expansionist ruler Hsinbyushin.
I'm not surprised at all Ayutthaya fell. The conquest didn't last long, though. The next king, Singu Min realized his logistics were vastly overstretched and withdrew back to Burma.
Upvote:3
Here are some other historical questions that user 69268 could ask:
How was Ninevah, capital of the mighty Neo Assyrian Empire, captured and destroyed by the revolting Medes, Persians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Scythians, and Cimmerians in 612 BC?
How was Babylon, capital of the mighty Neo Babylonian Empire, captured by the Persians in 539 BC?
How as Persepolis, capital of the mighty Persian Empire, captured and destroyed by the Macedonians and Greeks in 330 BC?
How did Rome get sacked by the Visigoths in 410 and the Vandals in 455? Rome had never been captured by foreign forces since the Gauls in about 390 BC, about 800 years before AD 410.
How did Constantinople, "this city of the world's desire", get sacked by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 after beating off many besieging forces since it was founded 874 years earlier in 330?
How was Ctesiphon, a great and wealthy city, capital of the mighty Persian Empire of the Sassanid Dynasty, captured and sacked by the Arabs in 637?
How was Chang'an, the largest city in the world, capital of the mighty Tang dynasty of China, captured and briefly occupied by the An Lushan rebels in 756 and by Tibetan forces in 763?
How was Tenochtitlan, one of the largest and most splendid cities in the world, and possibly the largest in the western hemisphere, capital of a powerful realm, captured and destroyed during the fighting by Cortes and a relatively small force of Spanish and their native allies in 1521?
How was Vijayanagara, one of the largest cities in the world and capital of the mighty Vijayanagara Empire, captured by the Deccan Sultanates, looted, burned, and its population enslaved and massacred, in 1565?
Such events do happen, and in each case there is a complicated specific situation and series of events that explain how those cities were captured by their enemies.
Assuming that Ayutthaya, capital of a large and powerful country, could not be captured by its enemies is foolish, as many capitals of larger and more powerful states have been captured by their enemies.
More post
- 📝 chests for transporting bedding furnishings (and mattresses)
- 📝 Why were the Scandinavians not as expansive as other Europeans in global colonization?
- 📝 Why do we study Mughals as part of medieval history of India and European conquest as modern India?
- 📝 How accurate and balanced is Paul Johnson's 'A History of the Jews'?
- 📝 How was the Spartan "300" battle recorded?
- 📝 Does the term Gododdin ultimately derive from the Norse god Odin?
- 📝 Did Antoine de Saint-Exupery have any offspring?
- 📝 What should be historically correct costume of Doctor Faust?
- 📝 Did the US military just kill more Russians in Syria than they ever did during the Cold War?
- 📝 How to decode / read US Veterans Bureau Form 7202?
- 📝 Was the unemployment rate in the Nazi regime lower than the Weimar Republic?
- 📝 What did the Emancipation Proclamation exactly do?
- 📝 How long might the campaigning season in the Caucasus have lasted for the Germans?
- 📝 What is going on in this depiction of a mosque scene?
- 📝 What was the longest lasting economic bubble?
- 📝 The crusades against the Moors
- 📝 Can members of the Electoral College vote in opposition of their state's popular vote if they deem the president-elect unfit to serve?
- 📝 Did the later Byzantine Emperors use regnal numbers?
- 📝 Why did marriage and multiple children make Hurrem Sultan special?
- 📝 What were the Japanese defenses for an allied invasion of Kyushu?
- 📝 Was there a time when a Senator was wheeled in from the hospital to cast a deciding vote not to do something?
- 📝 Switzerland's political isolation after World War II
- 📝 Why did Churchill order the destruction of the bombes?
- 📝 Could some of the Titanic passengers have climbed on the iceberg to survive?
- 📝 Why does Ngram show an extreme spike in use of "LOL" in mid 1600s?
- 📝 Why did Associate justice Black speak of a Pyrrhic victory?
- 📝 Did the drapes in old theatres actually say "ASBESTOS" on them?
- 📝 What involvement did Jonathan Edwards have with the Conspiracy of 1741?
- 📝 Where and how did the concept of "incorporation" originate?
- 📝 How could a prisoner get lessons to read, write and do mathematics in jail, while innocent people didn't get the basic knowledge in 18th-19th century?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How were the Burmese able to sack Ayutthaya when it was one of the wealthiest and most powerful cities in Asia at the time?
- 📝 How many men were lost on the USAT Arcata and was she loaded with troops when she was hit?
- 📝 How and when was the modern company ownership structure invented?
- 📝 How were diplomats and their staffs treated when World War II was declared?
- 📝 How and when was the Temple of Trajan destroyed?
- 📝 How was Enguerrand VII de Coucy able to keep his allegiance to both king of England and France during the Hundred Years War?
- 📝 When was the last moment that Dutch, German and Swiss German were the same language?
- 📝 Have there been known instances in history when a queen consort slept with someone other than her husband, and no one got hurt? How was that possible?
- 📝 When the outbreak of World War II was foreseeable, were any European commoners able to pre-emptively emigrate?
- 📝 What was the basic structure of power in the CPSU and how were the politicians at each level chosen?
- 📝 Why and how were the Mongols able to invade Russia successfully?
- 📝 How were the Big Four compensated when British Rail was formed?
- 📝 When and how was West/East-German citizenship determined in the early years of post-war Germany?
- 📝 What kinds of documents were forged in the middle ages and how common was forgery?
- 📝 When and how was the cairn structure in the "Sea of Galilee" covered in water?
- 📝 What incentives were there for Soviet and Chinese politicians to try climb to the top when there was so much history of deposing their own?
- 📝 Was there ever a type of powered model car/vehicle racing, where the cars were in no way controlled, and were all on the one single shared track?
- 📝 How can we be sure what the first day of the month was 2000 years ago and how can we determine which years were leap years?
- 📝 How and when did the word "nuclear" replace the word "atomic"?
- 📝 When and how did the USA and the UK become allies?
- 📝 Why were the drawings of Colossus burnt after WW2 and why was its very existence "of course" kept secret?
- 📝 How was the United States able to produce excellent tanks in 1942?
- 📝 How were the cities of Milan and Bruges spared by the Black Death?
- 📝 How difficult was to escape from a naval battle after engaging into one during the Age of Sail?
- 📝 How likely is it that any non-Celtic language was spoken in the British Isles when the Romans invaded?
- 📝 When and why was the samurai class abolished?
- 📝 How many lives were estimated to have been saved by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs?
- 📝 How and why was the boundary between West and East Berlin decided to be where it was?
- 📝 When and how did the Han ethnic group become by far the biggest ethnic group in China?
- 📝 How was the modern geographic boundary between Europe and Asia decided?