How King Ekkathat died: the Thai chronicles and the Burmese chronicle

The night the city fell

The Burmese entered the city at Maha Chai Fortress around midnight on 7 April 1767, and people fled in every direction. King Uthumphon was captured and carried off to Burma, where he remained in the monkhood for about another thirty years. Of King Ekkathat there is no record that he was taken alive.

The Royal Autograph version of the royal chronicles says he fled by small boat and hid in a thicket near Ban Chik, beside Wat Sangkhawat, south-east of the city, an area the war had passed over months before. He went without food for eleven or twelve days, until the Phra Nai Kong, the commander the Burmese left in charge of the city, had people search for him. They carried him by boat to the Pho Sam Ton camp, and he died as soon as he arrived. The Burmese account, which differs, is in the table above and the notes at the end of this page.

The body at Khok Phra Men

The royal chronicles say the Phra Nai Kong had the body buried at Khok Phra Men, in front of Wihan Phra Mongkhon Bophit in the centre of the city, until the country was settled enough for a cremation. The spot is right next to Wat Phra Si Sanphet, which you can visit today. About seven months later, when Phraya Tak took the Pho Sam Ton camp, he had the body exhumed and cremated, and gathered the surviving members of the old dynasty and provided for them.

Historians see this cremation as carrying great political meaning, because it was the duty of a successor to the throne, performed before officials and commoners who had just come back from the forest.

King Ekkathat in the sources of the two sides

The Thai chronicles, revised later, paint King Ekkathat as weak, but the Burmese chronicle describes him ordering brick forts built, warships constructed and caltrops and thorn barriers laid around the city, by day and by night. More recent studies therefore read the old picture with greater care.