Thonburi and King Taksin: raising Siam again in fifteen years (1767–1782)

In April 1767, Ayutthaya fell to the Burmese army. The Siamese kingdom was left with neither capital nor dynasty, and several leaders vied for what remained of it. Fifteen years later, a new power dominated the Chao Phraya basin. It had reconquered the north and the south, driven the Burmese out of Lanna, imposed its own candidates in Cambodia and brought the Emerald Buddha back from Vientiane. Yet the architect of this recovery, Taksin, the son of a Chinese immigrant, ended his days deposed and then executed. His story is that of a man and his generals. It is also that of an entire region, which reorganised itself around Thonburi.

1767: a kingdom without a centre

On 7 April 1767, the army of Burma’s Konbaung dynasty, sent by King Hsinbyushin, took and sacked Ayutthaya. The city had dominated the Chao Phraya basin since the fourteenth century. With it vanished the Ban Phlu Luang dynasty. So too did the centre that had held together a network of provinces, vassal principalities and tributary kingdoms. Power fragmented at once. The sources mention several rival centres, at Phimai, Phitsanulok, Fang and Nakhon Si Thammarat. Each claimed a share of the inheritance.

The victors did not settle for long. The reason lay further north. Since 1765, Burma had been at war with Qing China, which invaded it several times until 1769. The bulk of the Burmese army was tied down on that front. It was in this respite, imposed by a conflict that had nothing to do with Siam, that the Siamese revival would play out. This point is worth bearing in mind: the recovery of Thonburi was not the work of one man alone; it depended on the balance between neighbouring powers.

Sin, governor of Tak

The man who would seize the opportunity was called Sin. According to the most common reconstructions, he was born in Ayutthaya on 17 April 1734. His father, Yong (Zheng Yong in Chinese), was a Teochew immigrant from Chenghai district in Guangdong. That, at least, is what a report by Zheng Rui, a Chinese officer sent from Canton in 1768, states, as cited by the daily newspaper The Nation. Other accounts make this father a tax collector. His mother was named Nok-lang. In 1764, Sin was appointed governor of Tak with the rank of phraya. He was then known as ‘Phraya Tak’, and ‘Taksin’ derives from the contraction of this title and his personal name.

By the time of the fall, he was no longer in the capital. He had left it with a small band of men before the final assault. According to some sources, the Cambodian prince Ang Non, who had taken refuge in Ayutthaya, may have gone with him. From January 1767, Sin took Chonburi and Rayong, on the eastern shore of the Gulf. He then made Chanthaburi his base, assembled a fleet there and sailed back up towards the Chao Phraya. In the autumn of 1767, he seized Thonburi and defeated the Burmese camp at Pho Sam Ton, near the ruins of Ayutthaya. The date of this battle is not settled: most accounts place it in 1767, but the EBSCO entry dates it to October 1768. On 28 December 1767, Taksin was crowned at Thonburi.

The king of Thonburi and his men

A sovereign between two worlds

Taksin belonged to no royal lineage, and he was half Chinese. Both traits weighed on his entire reign. In his letters to the Qianlong Emperor, he signed himself ‘Zheng Zhao’. Zheng was his paternal clan name. Zhao transcribes the Thai chao, ‘lord, sovereign’. This dual identity was also a political asset. The royal Chinese regiment, commanded by Phraya Rachasetthi (Chen Lian), played a genuine military role: it guarded Ratchaburi in 1775, then the supply line at Nakhon Sawan. Its commander would later become head of the Teochew community.

We do not know Taksin’s face, as no contemporary portrait has come down to us. The image of the fierce-featured ‘warrior king’ is a later construction, born of school textbooks and statues. This is worth knowing, so as not to confuse the man with the national hero he has been made into.

The generals

The recovery rested on a small circle of military commanders. The first was Thongduang, born on 20 March 1737, known by the title of Chao Phraya Chakri. The reign’s principal general, he led the operations in Cambodia (1771), the conquest of Chiang Mai (1775), the defence of Phitsanulok (1775–1776) and the capture of Vientiane (1779). His brother, Chao Phraya Surasi, co-led the northern campaigns and the defence of Phitsanulok. He married Sri Anocha, sister of the Lampang nobleman Kawila, and would become viceroy under Rama I.

Other figures moved around them. Phraya Phichai, a comrade-in-arms from the very beginning, is known chiefly through a tradition of loyalty discussed below. Inthraphithak, Taksin’s son, held the title of viceroy and was regarded as heir presumptive.

Restoring unity

These men first led the internal reconquest. Nakhon Si Thammarat, on the peninsula, was taken on 21 September 1769, and Phitsanulok on 8 August 1770. The other rival centres were subdued between 1768 and 1770. The detail of these campaigns remains poorly documented in the sources available in Western languages. The royal chronicles (phongsawadan), for the most part written or reworked under the following dynasty, often disagree on dates and circumstances.

Peking, or the elusive recognition

For an eighteenth-century ruler in mainland Southeast Asia, Chinese investiture was no formality. It governed tributary trade and conferred a prestige that neighbours understood. Yet Peking began by turning Taksin’s envoys away. There were two reasons for this. On the one hand, he was not an heir of the fallen dynasty. On the other, a rival was making himself heard. Mạc Thiên Tứ, master of the port of Hà Tiên on the Gulf of Siam, was sheltering two princes of Ayutthaya, Chui and Sisang. He let the court know that the legitimate heirs were in his hands and tried to place Chui on the Siamese throne. This prince should not be confused with Taksin’s son, who bore the same personal name.

The turning point came on 15 August 1769. The emperor then received a memorial from the senior official Li Shiyao, based on Zheng Rui’s inquiry. Only at that moment did the court grasp that Taksin truly controlled Siam. For what followed, the sources contradict one another on the date of recognition: 1772, 1777, or even 1781–1782. The historian Qian Jiang goes so far as to argue that Taksin never obtained, in his lifetime, the full recognition he sought. One fact is better attested: in May 1781, a first official tributary mission set out for China, less than a year before the king’s fall.

Facing Burma: from retreat to the great war of 1775–1776

Lanna changes sides

In the north, Lanna, the kingdom of Chiang Mai, had lived under Burmese domination since 1558. From 1769, the Burmese governor Thado Mindin exercised there a rule that the available accounts describe as oppressive. A first Siamese expedition failed in 1771. The situation changed in 1774, when two local nobles switched sides. Phaya Chaban (Bunma) in Chiang Mai and Kawila in Lampang rallied to Thonburi. The historical tradition of the north calls this movement Fuen Man, ‘breaking free of the Burmese’. Chiang Mai fell between December 1774 and 15 January 1775. Taksin appointed Phaya Chaban governor of Chiang Mai and Kawila governor of Lampang, both as vassals.

This should not be seen as an ‘annexation’ in the modern sense. The Lanna elites changed overlord without merging into a Siamese state. The Burmese, moreover, retained the north of the country from Chiang Saen. Kawila, for his part, began an ascent that would make him ruler of Chiang Mai in 1797, then a vassal king in 1802.

Burma strikes back

In Ava, the rise of Thonburi caused alarm. Early in 1775, a Burmese army was encircled at Bangkaeo, in the Ratchaburi area. At the end of the year, Hsinbyushin sent his best general to ‘curb’ Taksin’s power. This was Maha Thiha Thura, victor over the Chinese invasions and commander-in-chief since 1768. It was the greatest Burmese–Siamese war of the reign. Despite the defence mounted by Chakri and Surasi, Phitsanulok fell on 15 March 1776.

Dynastic chance then settled the conflict. Hsinbyushin died in June 1776, and his successor Singu recalled all the troops. For the second time, Siam owed its salvation to circumstances in Burma. In the wake of this, General Ne Myo Thihapate withdrew from Chiang Mai to Chiang Saen, and Burma lost control of central Lanna. The Burmese were not defeated for all that. Their priorities had changed, and the balance of power was reversed as a result.

To the east: Cambodia, Hà Tiên and the Lao kingdoms

Cambodia, a prize between Siam and Vietnam

In the east, the rivalry played out with the Nguyễn lords of southern Vietnam, who were also advancing their pieces in Cambodia. King Outey II (Ang Ton), in power since 1758, leaned towards Vietnam. His rival Ang Non had found refuge at the Siamese court. A first intervention failed in 1769. That of 1771, conducted as part of a war against the Nguyễn lasting until 1773, succeeded: Phnom Penh was burnt and Hà Tiên completely devastated. Mạc Thiên Tứ, the rival who had contested Taksin’s legitimacy in Peking, thus lost his base.

In that same year, 1771, the Tây Sơn revolt against the Nguyễn broke out in Vietnam. Absorbed by this internal war, the Nguyễn ceased to act as a counterweight to Siam in Cambodia. In 1775, Ang Ton abdicated in favour of Ang Non. This king is often described as dependent on Thonburi, but his reign was brief. In 1779, the minister Tolaha Mou, backed by Nguyễn Phúc Ánh, had him killed and placed the young Ang Eng, born in 1773, on the throne. Cambodia remained contested ground, and it was a fresh expedition to that country that kept Chakri away from the capital in 1782.

Vientiane and the Emerald Buddha

Lan Xang, the former Lao kingdom, had been divided since 1707 into three states: Luang Prabang, Vientiane and Champassak. Their rivalries gave neighbouring powers openings to exploit. In 1773, under attack from Luang Prabang, the king of Vientiane, Ong Boun (Siribounyasan), placed himself under Burmese protection, which angered Thonburi. In March 1779, Chakri took Vientiane. The city was plundered but not destroyed. The Emerald Buddha and the Phra Bang, two sacred statues, were carried off. Princes Nanthasen, Inthavong and Anouvong were taken hostage, and several thousand Lao families were resettled at Saraburi.

Such population transfers were common practice in the region’s wars: men were captured as much as territory. Vientiane became a Siamese dependency. The claim that all three Lao kingdoms then became tributaries remains to be confirmed. On Ong Boun’s death in 1781, Nanthasen was allowed to return and reign. One of the hostages, Anouvong, would rise up against Bangkok in 1826–1828: the humiliation of 1779 carried the seeds of a future conflict.

The Emerald Buddha was first installed near the present-day Wat Arun, on the Thonburi bank. A University of Washington thesis sees it as a ‘prisoner of war’, sacred booty put to work in the building of the state. This critical reading has the merit of reminding us that, before becoming the palladium of the kingdom, the statue was a trophy.

April 1782: one fall, several accounts

The king’s ‘madness’

The end of the reign is the most disputed episode. The official chronicles of the Rattanakosin period, that is, of the dynasty founded by Rama I, assert that Taksin had become mad and cruel. Western missionaries describe him as ‘half mad’, ill-treating even his own family. He is said to have demanded that monks recognise him as a sotāpanna, a Pali term for one who has ‘entered the stream’, the first stage of awakening. According to EBSCO, some 500 monks were allegedly flogged for refusing.

The historian Nidhi Eoseewong, quoted by Prachatai, counters these accounts with an objection of method. The testimonies of madness appear only after the king’s death, whereas documents predating the coup show him carrying out his duties normally. And the official version was written by those who succeeded him. Other interpretations, such as EBSCO’s, emphasise the fragility of his legitimacy, linked to his commoner origins and mixed ancestry. This is a plausible hypothesis, not a proven fact.

The coup and the execution

On 1 April 1782, the troops of Phraya San took Thonburi and deposed the king. Chakri, then in Cambodia, hurried back. He ordered Taksin’s execution, on 6 April according to Britannica, on the 7th according to other sources, and ascended the throne on 6 April. That date is commemorated today as Chakri Memorial Day. The manner of death itself remains uncertain. School teaching speaks of a blow from a sandalwood club, or of a retreat into religious life. During a demonstration in 2021, activists maintained that he had been beheaded. Popular beliefs even hold that he survived. These are traditions, without documentary support.

The version according to which the execution was a necessary evil for the stability of the kingdom, repeated in popular history books, remains close to the official account. A tradition, likewise fragile, has it that Phraya Phichai refused to serve the new king in the name of the principle kha kao chao liang, ‘a servant does not serve two masters’, and was executed in his turn. Rama I then moved the capital to the east bank, to Bangkok. On 22 March 1784, the Emerald Buddha was installed at Wat Phra Kaew.

What Thonburi reveals today

Taksin’s palace, the Wang Doem (often spelt Wang Derm), now stands within the grounds of the Royal Thai Navy headquarters, which established its naval academy there from 1900. It can be visited in groups, by appointment. Modestly built and set against the fort, in 1768 according to UNESCO or as early as 1767 according to other sources, it retains from the Thonburi period only the T-shaped throne hall. To this are added a bell of Chinese origin, presented under Rama VI by the abbot of Wat Hong Rattanaram, and two Chinese pavilions from the early Rattanakosin period.

Next door, Wichai Prasit Fort, formerly called Wichayen, recalls why Thonburi was chosen. Built in 1685 under King Narai, it guarded the river route to Ayutthaya. Excavations by the Fine Arts Department, carried out since 1994, shed light on its history. In 1997, it was found that the fort had been built without foundations on wooden piles. In 2015, a section of the brick enclosure wall was uncovered at Khlong Ban Khamin. Historical sources indicate that these bricks were salvaged from old Phra Pradaeng and from the Burmese camps at Pho Sam Ton, Si Kuk and Bang Sai. The capital of the reconquest was quite literally built from the debris of war. For Thonburi’s 250th anniversary, in 2017, the walls and moats were restored.

Taksin’s memory reaches well beyond these remains. He is buried at Wat Intharam, in Bangkok. In Chenghai, a cenotaph containing his clothes, discovered in 1921, has been locally protected since 1984 and was visited by Princess Sirindhorn in 1998. Every 28 December, ‘Taksin the Great’ is commemorated.

The legacy of these fifteen years thus goes beyond the mere restoration of a kingdom. Thonburi reunified the central basin, brought Lanna over to its side, weakened Hà Tiên, made its weight felt in Cambodia and subjugated Vientiane. It benefited in turn from the Sino-Burmese war, the death of Hsinbyushin and the Tây Sơn revolt. This brief reign laid the territorial and human foundations on which Bangkok would build. The account of its end, written by the victors, nonetheless remains open, and historians and citizens alike continue to reread it.

Sources and further reading

1. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Taksin, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chakkri Dynasty, Britannica, n.d..
3. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Thonburi Kingdom, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
4. UNESCO, Thailand's forgotten palace, UNESCO, 2023.
5. Bangkok Post, Discovering historic Thon Buri, Bangkok Post, 2018.
6. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Thonburi Palace, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
7. Khaosod English, Review: Unanswered Questions At King Taksin's Old Palace, Khaosod English, 2019.
8. Prachatai English, A Chakri Day protest: 'Who killed King Taksin?', Prachatai, 2021.
9. The Nation, King Taksin and Thailand's Chinese roots, The Nation Thailand, n.d..
10. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Rama I, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
11. EBSCO, Taksin (Research Starters), EBSCO, n.d..
12. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Phraya Phichai, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
13. Qian Jiang, Seeking Recognition from the Son of Heaven (a), Sohu (reprise), 2017.
14. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Inthraphithak, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
15. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Siamese conquest of Lan Na (1774–1775), Wikipedia (en), 2025.
16. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Nakhon Chiang Mai (1775–1899), Wikipedia (en), 2025.
17. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Kawila / Burmese–Siamese wars, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
18. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Bangkaeo Campaign, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
19. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Burmese–Siamese War (1775–1776), Wikipedia (en), 2025.
20. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Phraya Rachasetthi (Chen Lian), Wikipedia (en), 2025.
21. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Siamese–Vietnamese War (1771–1773), Wikipedia (en), 2025.
22. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Ang Non II / Outey II, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
23. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Chaophraya Aphaiphubet (Baen), Wikipedia (en), 2025.
24. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Anouvong, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
25. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Kingdom of Vientiane, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
26. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Emerald Buddha / Nanthasen / Wat Phra Kaew Chiang Rai, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
27. Mémoire universitaire (auteur non relevé), The Emerald Buddha: Legend, Myth, and the Bedazzlement of ..., University of Washington Digital Repository, n.d..
28. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Maha Thiha Thura, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
29. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Ne Myo Thihapate, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
30. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Cambodian conflict (1812–1813) [contexte 1771-1779], Wikipedia (en), 2025.
31. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Ang Eng, Wikipedia (en), 2025.
32. TheCollector, The Chakri Dynasty That Has Ruled Thailand for Over 240 Years, TheCollector, 2025.