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The last years: was the king really deranged, or was it a political charge?
For the end of the reign, several sources say that King Taksin practised meditation until he believed he had attained the state of sotapanna (stream-enterer), punished monks who would not bow down to him, and inflicted severe royal punishments on people. This is one of the biggest debates in Thai history, because this condition is the main reason given for the end of the reign. This page sets the evidence of each side next to the other.
What each version says
| Sources | What it says (summary) |
|---|---|
| Royal Chronicles, Royal Autograph version | He sat in meditation so often that he lost his reason. He held that he had attained the state of sotapanna, and asked the monks whether a monk who was still an ordinary, unenlightened person should pay respect to a layman who was a sotapanna. The Supreme Patriarch (Si) and the senior monks who answered that he should not were stripped of their ecclesiastical rank and punished. It also tells of severe punishments on several occasions. |
| Letters of Monsieur Coudé, 1779 and 1780 (a French priest) | King Taksin kept saying that he would be able to fly through the air. He prayed, fasted and kept religious observances to prepare himself. The priests argued against him until he tired of them, and in the end the missionaries were expelled. |
| Letter of Monsieur Descourvières, 1782 | Says that for several years King Taksin had been oppressing his subjects and foreign merchants more and more heavily, until Chinese merchants abandoned their property and fled. But the writer was reporting from the letters and accounts of others, and was not in Thonburi himself. |
| Memoirs of Princess Narinthewi | Records bouts of derangement from 1768 onwards, and says that before sending envoys to China in 1781 he ordered bamboo and hardwood trees to be planted for the man of merit who would come to build a palace, because he himself was about to fly away. The author was a younger sister of King Rama I. |
| The royal letter to China of 1781, and King Rama V's commentary | Nothing in this royal letter suggests a loss of reason. King Rama V commented that its wording was "rather hot-headed, but not mad". |
The evidence that he lost his reason
The sources that describe his condition are of several kinds: chronicles, memoirs, priests' letters, the Chronicle of Songkhla, and the verse work by a Rear Palace official. What they agree on most is the intense meditation and the belief that he would be able to fly, which Father Coudé, who lived in Thonburi, wrote about as early as 1779, several years before the end of the reign.
The story of the single hair in 1780, in which the chronicle says he was so angry that he punished his son and executed an official, is another example often cited to illustrate his unstable temper.
The evidence and views on the other side
Nidhi Eoseewong argues, in his Thai Politics in the Reign of the King of Thonburi, that many contemporary reports came from rumour or were made for political advantage, and that after the change of reign the new court did not make much use of the charge, turning instead to stress ideological conflict, especially over the monastic order. Pramin Kruathong points out that the behaviour recorded had its causes: it was conduct going beyond what was expected of a king, more than insanity.
The side that holds he really did lose his reason carries weight too. Prince Damrong Rajanubhab considered that King Taksin's condition was real, to the point of endangering the country. One observation that holds good from both sides is that almost all the evidence passed through the hands of people who benefited from the change of reign, or was written from news that had been heard.
Where historians still disagree
- Whether he really lost his reason: there is no conclusion yet. Scholars and princes of the past have disagreed.
- Stories outside the chronicles: the belief that King Taksin did not die but went to be a monk at Nakhon Si Thammarat has no contemporary evidence to support it.
Frequently asked questions
Is there foreign evidence about King Taksin's condition?
Yes. Father Coudé's letters of 1779 and 1780 say King Taksin declared that he would be able to fly, and Father Descourvières' letter of 1782 tells of oppression, but the latter was written from hearsay.
Last updated 13 November 2026