The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 128 The Arrival of Heavenly Tribulation
The first day of April, the 1767nd year of Emperor Qianlong’s reign in the Qing Dynasty, AD.

The Burmese commander, Thihapati, assembled an army of 6,000, passed through the south of the city where no Chinese were stationed, and began to attack the inner city of Ayutthaya.

At this time, the last fortress outside the inner city, Hua Luo Ta, guarded by Luang Chatu, had already fallen. Luang Chatu and 300 soldiers were killed in the battle, and the Burmese army had no worries since then.

Tihapati observed the walls of the inner city and found that the cracks in the earth wall at the Triumphal Fort in the northeast corner were the largest, so he immediately decided to attack there by force.

He ordered the Burmese army to demolish Hongtan Temple, Sanbaodian Temple and other temples, and transport all the collected wood to prepare for burning the walls.

In Ayutthaya, the situation was no better than in the Chinatown in the south of the city.

The Burmese army's fourteen-month siege caused terrible damage to Ayutthaya.

After fourteen months of bombardment, a large number of houses in the city collapsed, and then the people began to demolish the houses in order to make fires and cook.

By now, Ayutthaya was like a large construction site. Most of the houses had collapsed, and deep pits were everywhere on the ground. Some of the pits were one or two meters deep. After being filled with water, corpses were lying and floating in them, which was very horrifying.

As for the corpses in various places in the city, people were still picking them up at first, but later almost no one cared.

Except for the main avenues, corpses of humans and animals were everywhere else, and the large number of rotting corpses presented a variety of bizarre giant appearances.

The city of Ayutthaya originally had a population of over 300,000, but now only has about 70,000 to 80,000 left. Adding the tens of thousands of people who escaped, the population loss in the city is also quite shocking, with at least more than 150,000 people gone.

Moreover, in April in Southeast Asia, the weather is already hot and rainy.

It rained and scorched the sun, and the plague soon arrived, with thousands of residents in the city falling ill.

In this situation, even if the Burmese army did not attack, Ayutthaya would not be able to hold out for long.

At this time, King Agada seemed to realize that he had to fight to the death. Seeing that the Burmese army was building a pontoon bridge close to the inner city, he immediately ordered his younger brother Chamon to lead the army out of the city to block them.

The Siamese army that left the city brought out the last glory of the Ayutthaya Dynasty.

Facing the Burmese army, which was smaller in number than them, their more than 6,000 people burst out with extremely strong fighting power, driving several waves of Burmese troops into the moat in succession and destroying a pontoon bridge.

But that's all. For the Burmese army, the Siamese army is not the Chinese army. As long as the Chinese army withdraws, there will be no fundamental conflict of interest with the Burmese army. The Siamese army is different and must be defeated.

So under the harsh order of Thihapati, the Burmese army continued to increase its troops, fought bravely, and put out the last resistance of the Siamese army.

The king's younger brother, Cha Meng, was shot by Burmese muskets, and more than a thousand officers and soldiers were killed or wounded, so they had to retreat back to the city.

Afterwards, the Burmese army could not wait to pile up a large amount of firewood under the Triumphal Fort to bake the city walls.

The burning lasted for six days. During these six days, the Siamese defenders tried many times to leave the city to stop it. King Agada also prayed to the Buddha in the temple to send down heavy rain, but all failed.

This section of the city wall already had large cracks, and had recently been unstable due to heavy rain. It was also baked by the fire. Later, the Burmese army set up cannons and bombarded it fiercely, and the wall could no longer withstand it.

On the afternoon of April 7th, the city wall under the Triumph Fort collapsed in the northeast of Ayutthaya, and the Burmese army, which had been prepared for a long time, swarmed in. The Siamese defenders were unable to resist and fled after a brief resistance.

After fourteen months of siege, the Burmese army finally broke into the city.

The fourteen-month siege was a torment for both sides. The Burmese army suffered great hardships outside the city, sleeping in the open air, and they felt great resentment when they entered the city.

Therefore, as soon as they entered the city, they began to burn, kill and loot. No matter whether it was residential houses, government offices or palaces, they were all set on fire after the looting. Even temples were not spared.

The famous Phra Sri Samphit Buddha, which has great artistic value, was burned down by the Myanmar army just to melt the gold inlaid on the Buddha.

The Burmese army first arrested the city's residents, soldiers and even nobles, tortured them and extorted their money.

When they saw that the Siamese people really couldn't come up with the money, they began to kill indiscriminately. Most men, both adults and children, were not spared.

Many women were raped and killed, and some were taken away as trophies.

On April 7th alone, the Burmese army massacred more than 30,000 Thais.

After a brief resistance, the abdicated Siamese king Vu Bentong, who was known as the Mad King and suffered from leprosy, his wives, concubines and children, as well as the queen and children of King Agada, more than 60 people, were all captured.

Under the protection of more than ten guards, King Agada of Siam escaped through the secret passage of the palace to the nearby Monastery, and finally hid in the jungle next to the temple.

During the breakout, the injured King Agada's brother Chamon and King Agada's legitimate son Zhao Facui were unfortunately caught by the Burmese army as soon as they came out of the tunnel.

They had deliberately made themselves look dirty in order to conceal their identities and escape, but they ran into a group of stupid Burmese soldiers.

The Burmese soldiers were furious when they saw that they were dressed in rags and didn't find much valuables.

Chao Phac Thuy knelt down and begged for mercy, shouting that he was the prince of Siam, but the Burmese army did not understand and then hacked them all to death.

But King Agada was different. Miraculously, he was not discovered.

But this is not a good thing, because there is no food in the jungle, and there are Burmese troops everywhere outside, so they can't get out of the city at all.

So after a day, the guards around him slipped away one after another under the pretext of going out to find food.

King Agada was still waiting anxiously at first, but after waiting for two days without a single bite to eat and all the guards had run away, he realized that he had been abandoned.

Poor King Agada was fat and had difficulty moving around on a normal day. Now, after being hungry for two days, he felt dizzy and could not walk.

So he could only hold on in the jungle, hoping that one of the guards would have a change of heart and come back to save him.

Do you think that's the end? No!

Obesity limited King Agada's mobility, but also made him exceptionally resilient. This notorious Siamese king survived ten days in the wilderness, relying solely on dirty water. This... this was worse than being hacked to death by the Burmese army. He starved for ten days without dying – this is truly the ultimate form of torture.

When the Burmese army finally found him, King Agada had become so hungry that he was unrecognizable, and the palace guards did not recognize him for a while.

The Burmese army then found a large wooden board and carried him out of the woods. King Agada died before reaching the Burmese army camp and was hastily buried by the Burmese army. He had been hungry for ten days and had not had a single hot meal until his death.

. . . .

Kunming, Yunnan.

The new Governor-General of Yunnan and Guizhou and Minister of War, Mingrui, arrived in Kunming. Along with Mingrui, elite troops that Qianlong had selected from across the country also arrived in Kunming.

Among them, there are 600 soldiers from the Xishan Jianrui Battalion of the Eight Banners stationed in Beijing, and 400 soldiers from the Internal and External Firearms Battalion.

There are 1,600 Eight Banners stationed in Jilin and Heilongjiang outside the Great Wall.

The old unlucky guy was almost killed by the Qing government using 400 Solon soldiers, a total of 3,000 elite soldiers of the Eight Banners.

Most of them are Manchu bannermen and Solon soldiers, and there are absolutely no Mongolian Eight Banners and Han Eight Banners who are just there to make up the numbers. Their combat effectiveness is quite strong.

As for the Green Camp, 8,000 soldiers were drawn from the Sichuan Green Camp, and they were selected from the elite soldiers in northern Sichuan who had participated in the fierce battles of Jinchuan and Dajinchuan all year round.

The Guizhou Green Camp allocated 10,000 people.

During the Qing Dynasty, Guizhou Province and western Hunan had always been places where anti-Qing sentiment was relatively intense, so the Guizhou Green Camp had fighting almost all year round.

In addition, they were also familiar with mountain warfare, so most of them were mobilized, almost all of them came out, and there were quite a few elite soldiers.

At the same time, Fucha Mingrui was also one of the most powerful generals in Manchuria. He had participated in the horrific Black Water Camp Battle under Zhao Hui's command.

The only people who can be compared with him in the same period are Hailancha and his later cousin Fukang'an.

In order to prevent Fu Cha Mingrui from being constrained in Yunnan, Emperor Qianlong specially gave him the title of Minister of War so that he could easily mobilize the Southwestern Green Camp.

Halfway through the journey, Qianlong gave Mingrui the actual power to establish a government office and transferred Mingrui's good friend E Ning to be the governor of Yunnan.

According to Mingrui's report, Nuomu, the governor of Kaigui Road in Henan, was transferred to Yunnan Salt Road, and Qian Shougu, the governor of Hanzhong Road in Shaanxi, was transferred to Yunnan Yidong Road.

The former was to hand over the financial power of the entire Yunnan province to Mingrui.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the area east of Kunming was called Yidong, in order to ensure the supply of food and fodder for the Ming Dynasty.

Qianlong always responded to any other recommendations made by Mingrui.

At the end of April, Qianlong transferred the powerful deputy governor Erjing'e to Mingrui as deputy general, and the nominal governor Hailancha was also transferred to the front line.

In May, Mingrui impeached Guizhou Governor Tang Pin for delaying the supply of military supplies. Qianlong did not even ask about the case but directly ordered his arrest. This shows his support for Mingrui and his determination to gain control of Myanmar.

Immediately afterwards, Mingrui began to rectify the administration and military equipment throughout Yunnan Province. General Suo Zhu, Yongchang Prefecture Governor Chen Dalu and a large number of civil and military officials were impeached and imprisoned by Mingrui.

Even the Manchu bannerman general Yang Ning, the former Guangzhou general who came to stabilize the situation earlier and the current Yunnan admiral, was dismissed.

As a result, the entire province of Yunnan truly felt the power of Mingrui, a top Manchu official and a favorite of Emperor Qianlong.

Finally, no one dared to shirk or retreat from Mingrui's military orders, and the war machine began to roar.

But many things have good and bad sides.

Mingrui is too upright but not gentle enough, which makes the people below panic but he does not know how to appease them, resulting in no one daring to tell him the truth.

Faced with the failure of the previous two expeditions, the Yunnan Green Camp had not been in battle for a long time and lacked combat effectiveness.

On the other hand, a bigger reason was that the Konbaung Dynasty was in its rising period and its combat effectiveness was far stronger than the Qing Dynasty thought.

But after Mingrui did this, no one dared to tell the truth anymore.

What's the matter? The memorial I, Mr. Manchu, submitted to the emperor has already set the tone. That is, the Yunnan Green Camp generals are greedy and cowardly, and Yang Yingju, Li Shisheng and others deserve to be put to death. It was obvious that the battle could be won with only 20,000 or 30,000 people, but they just couldn't win. It was all because of their incompetence.

The main reason you suddenly say that Yang Yingju and Li Shisheng cannot bear all the blame is that the enemy is too strong.

Isn't this a slap in the face of me, Lord Ming Ruiming? Do you still want to get away with it?
Therefore, in this atmosphere, civil and military officials in Yunnan described the Burmese army as being no different from the chieftains on the border, except that they had more people, better weapons, and the roads were more difficult to travel than those of other chieftains.

The mighty Konbaung Dynasty was directly turned into a powerful chieftain in a mountainous, densely forested and malaria-ridden area.

What’s even more terrible is that Emperor Qianlong, who was far away in Beijing, also thought so.

Even before Mingrui rushed to Yunnan, Emperor Qianlong had "arranged" Myanmar on a map that was basically untrue and came from nowhere.

It was on that map of Upper and Lower Burma, which was about the same size as Taiwan Island, that Qianlong personally gave instructions.

Instructed Mingrui to decide which chieftains should be moved to which land after occupying Myanmar, how many chieftains should be allowed to surrender, what kind of chieftains must be destroyed, etc.

Simply put, Qianlong treated the Konbaung Dynasty as a dish and arranged it while chatting and laughing.

Qianlong even told Mingrui that he had already ordered the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, Li Shiyao, to send people out to sea to inform King Agada who was already lying in the jungle.

He ordered King Agada to seal off the border and immediately arrest and bring Mengbo, the White Elephant King of the Konbaung Dynasty, to the capital if he escaped to Siam.

(End of this chapter)