The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c23.s3.38

v4.c23.s3.38

The captive princes of Ayuthia, Ava and Chiengmai were kept at Pegū and given reasonable treatment, even being allowed to live in double-roofed houses painted white, the prerogative of royalty.² But Siam was not settled with the fall of Ayuthia. Till the end of the reign the armies were constantly campaigning all over the country from the northern Laos downwards. Year after year Bayinnaung led a weary chase through trackless hills where his men were reduced to eating grass and died in thousands of starvation and disease. Year after year there was cruel fighting against the Siamese stockades, against their war-canoes and flaming rafts. He usually succeeded in occupying towns, setting his puppet with a Burmese garrison on their little thrones, and dragging away the population, when it had not hidden in the jungle, to work as slaves in Burma if they survived the long march. But he could do little more than this, he could give no settled government to the surviving victims, and some of the chiefs he never caught. He generously allowed the captive king of Siam, who had become a monk, to return home on pilgrimage; no sooner had he arrived than he flung off the robe and so another siege of Ayuthia became necessary. It lasted ten months (1568–69). The Burmese losses were so heavy that the men used to take shelter under the piles of their comrades’ corpses. The troops sickened of the carnage and officers were executed right and left for failure. The town could not be taken by storm and, although short of food, held its own until Bayinnaung employed treachery. He promised large rewards, and one of his prisoners, a Siamese lord, entered the town saying he had escaped from the Burmese. The Siamese gave him high command, and one night he opened the gates.