Bayinnaung

The energetic reign of King Razadarit of Hanthawaddy had (r. 1384–1421) had cemented the kingdom's existence.

Razadarit had firmly unified the three Mon-speaking regions together, and had successfully fended off the northern Burmese-speaking Ava Kingdom in the Forty Years' War (1385–1424), making the western kingdom of Rakhine a tributary from 1413 to 1421 in the process.

The war had ended in a stalemate but it was a victory for Hanthawaddy as Ava finally gave up its dream of restoring the Pagan Empire.

Pegu in the years following the war had occasionally aided Ava's southern vassal states of Prome and Taungoo in their rebellions but carefully avoided getting plunged into a full-scale war.

Hanthawaddy after the war had entered its golden age whereas its rival Ava had gradually gone into decline.

Hanthawaddy from the 1420s to the 1530s has been the most powerful and prosperous kingdom of all post-Pagan kingdoms.

Under a string of especially gifted monarchs—Binnya Ran I, Shin Sawbu, Dhammazedi and Binnya Ran II—the kingdom had enjoyed a long golden age, profiting from foreign commerce.

Its merchants trade with traders from across the Indian Ocean, filling the king's treasury with gold and silver, silk and spices, and all the other stuff of early modern trade.

The kingdom has also became a famous center of Theravada Buddhism.

It has established strong ties with Sri Lanka and had encouraged reforms that later spread throughout the country.

The powerful kingdom's end comes abruptly, subjected from 1534 onward to constant raids by the native Burmese Taungoo Dynasty from Upper Burma, previously ruled, since the waning of Mongol power, as a Chinese tributary under the hereditary kings of Burma’s Buddhist Shan people (linguistically, culturally and physically related to the neighboring Thais).

King Takayutpi is unable to marshal Hanthawaddy’s much greater resources and manpower against the much smaller Taungoo, led by King Tabinshwehti and his deputy general Bayinnaung.

Pegu becomes the capital of the united Burmese kingdom.

King Mingyi Nyo had in 1485 founded the First Taungoo Dynasty at Taungoo, far up the Sittaung River south of Inwa, towards the end of the Ava Kingdom in 1510.

Mingyi Nyo's forty-five-year reign has been one of the few stable regimes in Upper Burma in this age.

Toungoo's remote location (nestled between the Bago Yoma mountain range and the Karen Hill country, and cut off from the main Irrawaddy river valley) proves a vital advantage.

It takes effort to march to Toungoo.

The stability of his kingdom had attracted many refugees, and the flow of refugees had accelerated after Ava's fall.

When the Confederation of Shan States, led by Sawlom of Mohnyin, finally defeated Ava in March 1527, Nyo had deliberately devastated the countryside between Ava and Toungoo, filling the wells and breaking down the channels in the hope of making an impassable belt between Toungoo and the Confederation.

The Burmese bureaucracy and population at Ava had largely fled to Toungoo.

This increased manpower will allow Mingyi Nyo’s son Tabinshwehti and his deputy Bayinnaung to initiate an offensive war against larger kingdoms.

Tabinshwehti's improbable victory over Hanthawaddy has its beginnings in Mingyi Nyo's long stable rule.

Mingyi Nyo dies on November 24, 1530, and is succeeded by his fourteen-year-old son Tabinshweti, who rewards his childhood staff by handing out royal titles, and by marrying two of their daughters—Khin Hpone Soe, daughter of Mingyi Swe and sister of Ye Htut, and Khin Myat, daughter of Shin Nita.

He also places his young friends, including Ye Htut, as confidants.

Min Bin at Dhaka on February 8, 1533, receives tribute from local lords of Bengal, and raises a sixteen-year-old princess of Bengal royalty to queen.

He then pays a pilgrimage on March 26, 1533, to Bodh Gaya.

He leaves Dhaka for Mrauk-U on April 13, and on May 14 appoints governors of the newly acquired territories .

According to historians, his control of Bengal beyond Chittagong, where coins bearing his name and styling him sultan are struck, is nominal.

Like Bengal's sultans before him, he has to contend with raids by "Tripuri tribes" from the north throughout his reign, not just on Dhaka but also on Chittagong and Ramu.

The first important decision taken by the young Burmese king comes around April 1534, when an affair between Tabinshwehti's half-sister Thakin Gyi and his right-hand man Ye Htut is discovered.

The affair under Burmese law constitutes an act of treason.

Ye Htut, for his part, spurns suggestions of mutiny and submits to arrest, saying that although it is no crime to for a young man to love a young woman, it is an unpardonable crime for a soldier to break his oath of allegiance.

Tabinshwehti deliberates at length with his ministers, and finally concludes that Ye Htut should be given his sister in marriage, and a princely title of Kyawhtin Nawrahta.

With this decision, Tabinshwehti wins the unquestioning loyalty of his new brother-in-law.

Meanwhile, war has arrived uncomfortably close to his realm.

In late 1532, the Confederation of Shan States, already ruling much of Upper Burma, had attacked its erstwhile ally Prome, and sacked the city.

Although the Confederation is content to keep Prome as a vassal, the Toungoo leadership is concerned that their city—east of Prome on the same latitude, separated only by the Pegu Yoma (Bago Yoma) range—is an obvious target for attack.

Toungoo does have some advantages: nestled behind the Pegu Yoma range, the city is difficult to access from Ava, in contrast to the much more easily Prome on the Irrawaddy.

Moreover, the Toungoo principality, swollen as it is with refugees from Ava, commands considerably more manpower than its traditional base would have allowed.

Nevertheless, the Toungoo leadership decides that their kingdom must act decisively to avoid incorporation by the Confederation.

Fortunately for Toungoo, the Confederation is distracted by the leadership change after the assassination of Sawlon of Mohnyin, its principal leader, in 1533.

Breaking completely in late 1534 from his father's longstanding policy, Tabinshwehti decides to break out of his increasingly narrow realm by attacking the Hanthawaddy Kingdom to the south.

Though the Burmese chronicles attribute the audacious decision to the king alone, the eighteen-year-old king was more probably persuaded by older more experienced ministers at the court, who may have also played a major role in the initial campaigns.

Over the next sixteen years, Tabinshwehti, along with his deputy Kyawhtin Nawrahta (later Bayinnaung; lit.

"King's Elder Brother") will go on to unite many of the petty kingdoms that had existed since the fall of the Pagan Empire in 1287.

Binnya U, descendant of the Thai chief Wareru, had established Hanthawaddy as the capital of the Mon Hanthawaddy Kingdom, which covers all of what is now Lower Burma.

In 1519, António Correia, then a merchant from the Portuguese casados settlement at Cochin, had landed in Bago, then known to the Portuguese as Pegu, looking for new markets for pepper from Cochin.

A year later, Portuguese India Governor Diogo Lopes de Sequeira had sent an ambassador to Pegu.

Tabinshwehti and his court had selected Hanthawaddy as their first target because its king, Takayutpi, is a weak leader who does not command respect of his vassals.

Takayutpi's brother-in-law Saw Binnya practically rules the Martaban region as a sovereign, and scarcely acknowledges the high king at Pegu.

Takayutpi in turn makes an alliance with the Prome Kingdom, a vassal of the Confederation of Shan States.

Toungoo's opening maneuvers amounted to a mere raids of Hanthawaddy territory: its initial dry-season raids in 1534–1535, 1535–1536, and 1536–1537 have all failed against Pegu's fortified defenses, aided by foreign mercenaries and firearms.

In each campaign, Toungoo armies have only six thousand to seven thousand men, a few hundred cavalry and a few dozen war elephants, and do not yet have access to foreign troops and firearms.

Unlike his father Binnya Ran II, Takayutpi cannot organize any retaliatory actions.

His nominal subordinates in the Irrawaddy delta and Martaban send no aid.

Nonetheless, Pegu's defenses, led by two leading ministers of the court, Binnya Law and Binnya Kyan, have withstood the raids.

Both Binnya Kyan and Binnya Law had been childhood tutors of Takayupti, and are absolutely devoted to him.

Nonetheless, both ministers are executed in 1538 by the young king, who believes Toungoo's misinformation that the ministers are Toungoo moles.

After their death, the king finds himself helpless.

When Toungoo forces arrive once again in late 1538, he decides, rather than fight, to flee Pegu for the Prome Kingdom, where another brother-in-law of his, Narapati of Prome, is king.

(He does not retreat to Martaban, which is nominally still part of Hanthawaddy because he does not trust its governor Saw Binnya.)

The Toungoo forces take the Mon capital without firing a shot.

Narapati has remained a nominal vassal to Confederation-controlled Ava.

Although his authority does not extend beyond the immediate region around Prome, he has become ensnarled in the Toungoo–Hanthawaddy War.

An ally of King Takayutpi of Hanthawaddy, Narapati is married to Takayutpi's sister, and provides shelter to the fleeing Hanthawaddy troops in 1539.

When Toungoo troops attack the heavily fortified Prome, Narapati asks for help from the Confederation in Ava, which has neglected to intervene in the first four years of Toungoo–Hanthawaddy Wa in Lower Burma.

Now finally appreciating the gravity of the situation, the saophas finally band together and send in a force to relieve Prome.

The Confederation troops break the siege, then refuse to follow up on the retreating Toungoo armies.

Narapati forms an alliance with the Mrauk U Kingdom of Arakan by sending his sister and his queen (Takayutpi's sister) to King Min Bin of Mrauk U.

(Takayutpi had died soon after the battle.)

Narapati too dies soon after and is succeeded by Minkhaung.

Pegu becomes the capital of Tabinshwehti’s united Burmese kingdom in 1539.

Burmese King Tabinshwehti sends his top general and brother-in-law, Kyaw Htin Nawrata, upon whom he has conferred the name Bayinnaung, north in pursuit of Takayutpi, the Mon king of Pegu (r. 1526-1538) who had fled north to seek refuge at Prome.

Bayinnaung faces a superior force on the other side of a river in the famous Battle of Naung Yo.

After crossing the river on a Pontoon bridge (rafts in another version) Bayinnaung orders the bridge destroyed to spur his troops forward in battle and provide a clear signal that there will be no retreat.

Before the battle begins, Bayinnaung also disregards a message from Tabinshwehti ordering him to wait for the main body of troops to arrive.

Bayinnaung replies that he has already met the enemy and defeated them.

To those who criticize this action, Bayinnaung replies that if they lose, they will all be dead anyway and it will not matter whether they are alive or not.

Tabinshwehti is unable to take Prome because it is well defended with strong walls and supported militarily by Shan Ava.

When Takayupti dies, many of his loyal followers join Tabinshwehti's side.

Tabinshwehti increases his military strength by employing mercenaries of many nationalities, including Portuguese and Muslims.

The number of Portuguese soldiers in his employ is said to number as many as seven hundred.

Tabinshwehti, following a coronation ceremony and religious donations at the Shwedagon Paya, where he is crowned “king of all Burma” in 1541, ...