Hsinbyushin
By 1767, his armies had put down a rebellion in Manipur, captured the Laotian states, sacked and destroyed Ayutthaya, and driven back two invasions by China.
The warlord behavior by local governors and army commanders only increased in 1774 when Hsinbyushin suffered from what turned out to be a long illness that would ultimately claim his life.
The future king was born Maung Ywa (မောင်ရွ) to Aung Zeya and Yun San in Moksobo, a large village in the Mu river valley located about 60 miles northwest of Ava, on 12 September 1736.
His father Aung Zeya was the chief of the village of a few hundred households, and was part of gentry families that had administered the Mu valley for generations.
On 29 February 1752, three weeks before the fall of Ava, Aung Zeya founded the Konbaung dynasty to resist the upcoming Hanthawaddy rule, styling himself King Alaungpaya.
Many young men from 46 villages in the Mu valley, who longed to redress the humiliations of the previous decades, answered Alaungpaya's call.
[citation needed] Indeed, throughout the rest of the 1750s, Hsinbyushin was a key top commander in Alaungpaya's campaigns which by 1759 had reunited all of Burma (and Manipur), and driven out the French and the British who had provided arms to Hanthawaddy.
Hsinbyshin was second-in-command of the Burmese forces in Alaungpaya's invasion of Siam (1759–1760), which overran the Siamese defenses and reached the gates of Ayutthaya in April 1760.
But right after his father's death, Hsinbyushin made a blatant attempt to take over the throne, asking the top military command to support him.
He later assumed the new reign name of Thiri Thuriya Dhamma Mahadhammaraza Razadhipati (သီရိသူရိယဓမ္မမဟာဓမ္မရာဇရာဇဓိပတိ; Pali: Sirisūriyadhamma Mahadhammarāja Rājadhipati) on 3 January 1768.
[citation needed] The gates of restored Ava were named after the conquered states: on the east side, Chiang Mai, Martaban, Mogaung; on the south, Kaingma, Hanthawaddy, Myede, Onbaung (Thibaw); on the west, Gandalarit, Sandapuri (Viengchang), Kenghung; on the north, Tenasserim and Yodaya (Siam).
[7] In 1774, he raised the Shwedagon Pagoda to its present height, gilding it with his own weight in gold and erecting a golden spire studded with gems to replace the one thrown down during the 1769 earthquake.
In January 1765, a 20,000-strong Burmese army led by Ne Myo Thihapate based in Chiang Mai invaded the Laotian states.
Luang Prabang resisted but Thihapate's forces easily captured the city in March 1765, giving the Burmese complete control of Siam's entire northern border.
With a policy of total war, Burmese armies captured and sacked most of Ayutthaya's major cities along the way, while most Siamese fled into the jungles.
[13] A large number of Siamese soldiers also joined the Burmese armies within Siam, in a time where loyalties were to tied to monarchs rather than to ethnicities.
The main Chinese army overran Burmese defenses and reached Singu, 30 miles north of Ava around late January 1768.
The conflict began when Gamani Sanda, the governor of Martaban in charge of raising the army, had a disagreement with Binnya Sein, chief of the Mon officer corps.
[8][18] In April 1775, he raised the Shwedagon Pagoda to its present height, gilding it with his own weight[clarification needed] in gold and erecting a golden spire studded with gems to replace the one thrown down during the 1769 earthquake.
But the general faced a considerable difficulty in raising an army, especially in Lower Burma, which had just come off a major rebellion, and had to deal with the rampant insubordination in the Burmese high command.
Maha Thiha Thura decided to call off the invasion, and rushed back to Ava to ensure that his son-in-law Singu could ascend to the throne without incident.
Had Hsinbyushin lived longer, it's possible that Maha Thiha Thura's army could have successfully marched down through central Siam and destroyed the new Siamese capital at Thonburi.
His reckless decision to wage simultaneous wars with Siam and China nearly cost the kingdom its independence, allowing Chinese armies to advance within 30 miles of Ava.
Historian Victor Lieberman writes: "These near simultaneous victories over Siam (1767) and China (1765–1769) testified to a truly astonishing elan unmatched since Bayinnaung.
"[27] The long-term legacy of the wars Hsinbyushin pursued comes in terms of a new militaristic Burmese aristocracy, the cultural and economic capital from sacking of Ayutthaya, the military resurgence of Siam, the territorial changes vis-a-vis China and Siam/Thailand, and modern Burmese-Thai relations.
The resurgent Siam proved to be a formidable competitor to Burma- eventually seizing Lan Na, Vientiane, and Luang Prabang from the Burmese orbit.
[34][35][36] The initial goal of the Ayutthaya conquest was to end Siamese support of Mon rebels in the Tenasserim coast and Lower Burma.
The entirety of Tenasserim would remain in Burmese control until 1826, when it was acquired by Britain following the First Anglo-Burmese War before being cede it back 120 years later to an independent Burma.
The enduring enmity felt by Thais towards the Burmese began largely from Hsinbyushin's reign, in the light of the utter and senseless wanton destruction of the Siamese capital Ayutthaya in 1767.
Later Siamese armies of the Thonburi and Bangkok periods would inflict similar levels of destruction and atrocities as the Burmese in 1767, most notably the 1827 Sack of Vientiane during the Lao rebellion (1826–1828).
