THE BURMESE MOUNDS (โคกพม่า) |
Text & photographs by Tricky Vandenberg - July 2011 |
After a marauder trip which started two years earlier, the Burmese Army stood again before the walls of the City of Ayutthaya in 1767. The city was besieged for several months and the residents were deprived of provisions; many climbed the walls to escape starvation. The Burmese General Nemiao Sihabodi found it the right occasion to attack and choose to make the main effort, there where the Lopburi River was at its narrowest; at the north-eastern corner of the city in front of the Maha Chai Fortress. The current of the Lopburi River at that period of the year must have been low, being the dry season. The Siamese defense fortifications at Wat Kuti Daeng, Wat Sam Vihan and Wat Monthop on the opposite river bank of the city were attacked and taken by the Burmese forces. The Burmese chose to attack Ayutthaya at night and prepared a bamboo bridge in order to cross the river just opposite the weir, meant to break the incoming waters of the Lopburi River; a weir called Thamnop Ro. A stockade was built near the river bank in front of Wat Mae Nang Plum on the two sides were the bridge was planned to be set up. Stockades were created making earthen ramparts and by fixing wooden posts in the ground, preventing incoming gun fire. The Siamese, understanding what the ongoing Burmese activity meant, undertook an attack and succeeded to defeat the Burmese at the construction site. They continued attacking a Burmese fortification, but due to the lack of reinforcements were defeated by the Burmese, receiving support from other stockades. It would be the last time the citizens of Ayutthaya went out to fight. The Burmese continued their construction work and succeeded in building a bridge over the river. On the land in front of the city wall they set up a fortification and dug a tunnel towards the foundations of the city wall in order to “mine” the wall. The technique of "mining" was used in warfare to bring down fortifications not built on solid rock. A tunnel was excavated under the outer defenses either to provide access into the fortification or to collapse its walls. The tunnels were supported by temporary timber supports as the digging progressed. When the excavation was completed, the wall or bastion which was undermined would be brought down by filling the excavation hole with combustible material. The combustibles when lit, would burn away the pit props, leaving the structure above unsupported and thus liable to collapse. On Tuesday, 7 April 1767, at 15.00 Hr the Burmese set fire at the base of the city wall on the edge of the Maha Chai Fortress. All Burmese stockades started to fire their heavy guns into the city. At dusk the city wall busted. At 20.00 Hr the Burmese commander ordered a general attack, in where the Burmese scaled the walls on all sides of the city. At the spot the city wall crumbled the Burmese were able to enter the city around midnight. Ayutthaya turned to ashes. A chronicle speaks: Reaching 1129 of the Royal Era, a year of the boar, ninth of the decade, and arriving at a Tuesday, the ninth day of the waxing moon in the fifth month, the ninth day and middle day of the New Years Festival, the Burmese lighted fires to burn the combustible firewood under the foundations of the walls opposite the Head of the Sluice beside the Fort of Grand Victory, and the Burmese in the stockades of the Monastery of the Crying Crow and of the Monastery of the Jubilant Lady, as well as in each and every other stockade, lit [the fuses of] their great guns the guns in the forts and in the bastions - and simultaneously fired them on into the Capital in volleys from a little past three mong in the afternoon until dusk. As soon as the walls where they had lit the combustible firewood to consume the foundations had collapsed somewhat, around the second thum, they thereupon had [the fuse of] the signal gun lit. The Burmese troops of each brigade on each side who had been prepared, having accordingly taken their ladders and simultaneously leaned them against the places where the walls had collapsed and against other places all around the Holy Metropolis, climbed them and were able to enter the Capital at that time. Now they lit fires in every vicinity and burned down buildings, houses, hermitages and the Holy Royal Palace Enclosure, including the palaces and royal domicile. The light of the conflagration was as bright as the middle of the day. Then they toured around to chase and capture people, and to search out and confiscate all their various sorts of valuables, [whether] silver, gold, or [other] belongings. [2] In front of Wat Mae Nang Plum on the south side of the road, some of the remains of the Burmese fortifications are still visible [3]. Two earthen mounds of a stockade, been used by Chinese as burial mounds after the fall of the city, are one of the last witnesses of the 1767 tragedy. References: [1] Our Wars with the Burmese - Prince Damrong Rajanubhab (1917) - White Lotus, Bangkok (2000) - page 352-354. [2] The Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya - Richard D. Cushman (2006) - page 520-521 / Source: Royal Autograph. [3] Burmese mounds indicated on a Fine Arts Department digital map (2005). |
(The Burmese mounds) |
(Chinese graveyard on the Burmese mounds) |
(The Burmese mounds at Wat Mae Nang Plum) |