The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c23.s3.62

v4.c23.s3.62

The one hope of keeping the country together was to evacuate Siam and retrench in every direction. But neither Bayinnaung nor his son could see it. The only method by which the king could control remoter areas was by fighting them periodically, a process which used up the only people he could really call his own, the population round the capital. There were not sufficient left alive to till the soil there, and remoter areas would not send food. In 1596 a plague of field rats destroyed what little crop had been planted; there was a terrible famine, and it was only one of a series; wide stretches of country in lower Burma became a desert.