How were the Burmese able to sack Ayutthaya when it was one of the wealthiest and most powerful cities in Asia at the time? [closed]

Question

So I’m “watching” (more like skipping to the interesting scenes) the Thai lakorn/historical drama Sri Ayodhaya and in one episode, this one professor said that Ayutthaya was an incredibly wealthy and powerful kingdom and the city itself was also very well defended and wealthy too due to Ayutthaya being an extremely crucial and important trading city. In the latest episode, one other visiting professor also states that King Ekkathat commanded a large army and the city itself was very well defended.

If that’s the case, then how was it that Hongsawadee/Burma was able to sack and pillage Ayutthaya and burn it to the ground? I mean, shit, according to this one article/book that I read, people at the time saw the sacking of Ayutthaya as the literal apocalypse, and I could easily understand why. If I was Ayutthayan/Siamese and I was alive at the time and I saw Hongsawadee troops burn houses down and loot everything in sight (IIRC, some Hongsawadee soldiers even looted Buddha statues that were made of gold), I’d think that the world was ending, especially if I was led to believe up until that point that Ayutthaya was one of the greatest cities in the world that was forged by the Heavens or whatever.

So how was it that the Burmese were able to take and burn Ayutthaya to the ground? I heard that it was due to the political instability of the royal court of Ayutthaya along with incompetent rulers and power struggles/corruption but is that it?

Answer 1

Here are some other historical questions that user 69268 could ask:

How was Ninevah, capital of the mighty Neo Assyrian Empire, captured and destroyed by the revolting Medes, Persians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Scythians, and Cimmerians in 612 BC?

How was Babylon, capital of the mighty Neo Babylonian Empire, captured by the Persians in 539 BC?

How as Persepolis, capital of the mighty Persian Empire, captured and destroyed by the Macedonians and Greeks in 330 BC?

How did Rome get sacked by the Visigoths in 410 and the Vandals in 455? Rome had never been captured by foreign forces since the Gauls in about 390 BC, about 800 years before AD 410.

How did Constantinople, "this city of the world's desire", get sacked by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 after beating off many besieging forces since it was founded 874 years earlier in 330?

How was Ctesiphon, a great and wealthy city, capital of the mighty Persian Empire of the Sassanid Dynasty, captured and sacked by the Arabs in 637?

How was Chang'an, the largest city in the world, capital of the mighty Tang dynasty of China, captured and briefly occupied by the An Lushan rebels in 756 and by Tibetan forces in 763?

How was Tenochtitlan, one of the largest and most splendid cities in the world, and possibly the largest in the western hemisphere, capital of a powerful realm, captured and destroyed during the fighting by Cortes and a relatively small force of Spanish and their native allies in 1521?

How was Vijayanagara, one of the largest cities in the world and capital of the mighty Vijayanagara Empire, captured by the Deccan Sultanates, looted, burned, and its population enslaved and massacred, in 1565?

Such events do happen, and in each case there is a complicated specific situation and series of events that explain how those cities were captured by their enemies.

Assuming that Ayutthaya, capital of a large and powerful country, could not be captured by its enemies is foolish, as many capitals of larger and more powerful states have been captured by their enemies.

Answer 2

the Thai lakorn/historical drama Sri Ayodhaya

It's more lakorn and a LOT of historical propaganda rather than a historical drama, to be honest.

and in one episode, this one professor said that Ayutthaya was an incredibly wealthy and powerful kingdom

All incredibly wealthy and powerful kingdoms were eventually defeated.

The kingdoms of Ayutthaya, before that Sukhothai, and after that Siam were perpetually at war with the Burmese. Sometimes the Burmese won, sometimes the (now) Thais. Even today border raids by the Tatmadaw or Burmese army happen. Not very often, and the last couple of years none at all. But they happened and possibly/probably will happen again. Ask any Thai, they rarely talk favorably about the Burmese.

At the end of Ayutthaya the last king, king Ekkhathat, was not a very strong man. The court was divided into many factions. Wikipedia says there was a bloody struggle between princes over power. Something that almost certainly will not show up on the Thai version, as this is awfully close to lèse-majesté in Thailand...

So the king was not a powerful man, he got to rule after a bloody struggle over the throne. He had to be careful not to be murdered by his courtiers or family. Then the Burmese appear. At that time the Burmese army was at the peak of its strength, with a very strong and expansionist ruler Hsinbyushin.

I'm not surprised at all Ayutthaya fell. The conquest didn't last long, though. The next king, Singu Min realized his logistics were vastly overstretched and withdrew back to Burma.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayutthaya_Kingdom#Downfall