Fall of Ayutthaya (1767)

7 April 1767, at Hua Ro

On the conventional Thai chronology, 7 April 1767 is the day Burmese troops burned the base of Ayutthaya's wall at Hua Ro near Mahachai Fort, while artillery fired into the city from the surrounding camps.

Sappers under Ne Myo Thihapate had undermined the northeastern defences and burned the supporting material beneath the wall. By dusk part of it had collapsed.

At about 8 p.m. a signal began the general assault, and troops entered through the breach and at other points around the defences.

Fires bright as day

Once inside, the attackers set fire to houses, monasteries and the royal-palace precinct, plundered public and private property and seized inhabitants. Chronicles say the fires made the night city as bright as day.

Those chronicles report about 30,000 captives, among them a monk, princes and novices; the former king Uthumphon, by then a Buddhist monk, is listed among the high-ranking prisoners. The totals are figures reported by chronicles, not modern counts.

Which night, and what became of the king

The 7 April date is conventional rather than unanimously attested. A contemporary Burmese victory poem dates the overrunning of the city and palace to the night of 8 April, other Burmese chronicles place the breach about three days later, and historians attribute the discrepancy to different definitions of when the city was "taken" or to recording and calendar-conversion problems.

That poem says King Ekkathat was shot while attempting to escape. Other accounts have him dying of starvation after reaching the countryside; the manner, location and date of his death are disputed.

The siege had run a year and two months in the cited Thai account. The main Burmese army began leaving with captives and booty after roughly nine or ten days, and about 3,000 Burmese–Mon troops reportedly remained at Pho Sam Ton.