the beginning of the siege and died before he could regain his own country. In 1766, under his son, Sin Byu Shin, war was resumed by simultaneous marches on Ayuthia from north and south and the city was again invested. Phra Sucharit, the Siamese ruler, was unfamiliar with warfare but encouraged his people to a spirited resistance, hoping that relief would be afforded by the annual floods, coming in the wake of the rains; the enemy merely patrolled the waters in hundreds of boats and, as they subsided, threw up new earthworks even nearer the walls. In the spring of 1767, Sucharit, disheartened, attempted to treat with them but was rebuffed and when, with the arrival of reinforcements, the Burmese made an assault in force, the weakened city fell to them and was given over to looting, flames, and slaughter. The King, unattended, escaped in the confusion but was to die of exposure only a few days later.

KINGDOM OF TONBURI

Sin Byu Shin, leaving a viceroy with a small garrison to rule the country, withdrew his army to meet a threatened Chinese invasion of Burma and once again Siam fell into an interregnum of anarchy, with outlying districts setting themselves up as independent while robber bands preyed upon the people. An ex-official named Phraya Taksin, who had deserted his King when Ayuthia seemed likely to fall, gathered about himself a large number of deserters and broken men like himself and, by guile and treachery, soon acquired complete authority in the southeastern provinces, whence, in due time, he appeared before the walls of Ayuthia as a national avenger. Overcoming the garrison and killing the Burmese viceroy, Taksin declared himself King and selected, as the site of his new capital, the village of Tonburi, on the shore of the Chao Phraya opposite the settlement of Bangkok, where a populous city soon came into being. To strengthen his position, however, it was essential that Taksin destroy a legitimate pretender to the throne whose claims had many adherents; this prince had established himself at Khorat and thither the King sent an army with orders to take the city. But in advance of his soldiers he sent secret emissaries who so demoralized the prince's supporters that when the usurper's army appeared at last, the city fell into his hands almost without a struggle and the prince was captured and soon afterward murdered. With this last threat to his power removed, Taksin was able to send out expeditions in all directions and soon made himself undisputed master of the whole country.

The authority of this ruthless man was not to endure long. His appointment of humble relatives to high office offended the nobility, while the popular mind was turned against him by his excesses and by insidious references to his alien ancestry. In 1781, giving out that he was mad, a cabal of his courtiers dethroned him and offered the crown to one of themselves, the son of a secretary to the last kings of Ayuthia. This nobleman, Phraya Chakkri, already popular through his achievements as a royal minister and as a leader of the armies, was readily accepted as King by the people and ascended the throne in A.D. 1782, to found the dynasty which still reigns in Siam.

KINGDOM OF SIAM

Phraya Chakkri (hereafter to be styled as King Rama I) had scarcely assumed his new dignity when Bodaw Phra, King of Burma, attempted a new conquest of Siam. King Rama's military ability was such that the Burmese were finally everywhere defeated and, with the abandonment of Mergui and Tavoy by the Siamese in 1792, the recurrent wars between the two powers may be said to have ended for good. With the foreign danger averted, the King was able to organize his government, the seat of which was transferred from Tonburi to Bangkok, on the left bank of the river, where he constructed a fortified city.

Rama II became involved in war at the beginning of his reign. In 1786, the regent of the now effete Kingdom of Cambodia had formally recognized Siamese suzerainty and had sent the infant King to reside at Bangkok, while he continued to rule the state under Siam's aegis. Annam, to the east, however, made identical claims to supremacy and when, in 1809, the Annamese King attempted to enforce his demands, an army was sent from Bangkok to repel him. The brief campaign ended with Rama's annexation of the Cambodian province of Phratabong, while the rest of the country became a dependency of Annam.

Upon this King's death in 1825, the throne was usurped by one of his sons by a lesser wife, while the legitimate heir, Chao Fa Mongkut, a young man of twenty-one, retired to the safety of the Buddhist monkhood. The reign of Rama III is chiefly notable for Siam's resumption of political relations with the nations of the West. In 1833, a treaty drawn up between Siam and the United States of America represented the first formal tie between this country and any Asiatic power.

Toward the end of the reign, Cambodian politics again caused bad blood between Siam and Annam. A youth named Norodom, a son of the Cambodian King, had some time since been brought to Bangkok and reared at the Siamese Court. Upon his father's death, he was declared by Siam to be the rightful heir and, supported by a Siamese army, returned to Cambodia to gain the throne and, despite former agreements, to place the country again under Siamese protection.

During his years of retirement, Chao Fa Mongkut, the King's half brother, had assiduously devoted himself to the study of the English language, the sciences, and the manners, customs, and systems of government of foreign lands; at the same time, he missed no opportunity to meet and converse with European travelers. Coming to the throne as Rama IV in 1851, at the age of 47, he brought to his task a remarkable degree of enlightenment, which resulted in throwing the country open to foreign trade and intercourse, in the introduction of such arts as printing and shipbuilding, in the construction of roads and canals, in laying the foundations for systems of education and public health, and in numerous other reforms directed toward increasing the public welfare. His love of learning was indirectly responsible for his death for, visiting a mountain peak to observe an eclipse in 1868, he contracted the illness from which he died in that year.

The program of modernization initiated by King Rama IV was continued and expanded by his son, the great Chulalongkon (Rama V). Among the important reforms instituted during this reign were the abolition of debt slavery, the establishment of law courts, the construction of railways, the spread of education, regulation of the conditions of military service, and radical changes in methods of revenue and rural administration. The appointment of trained officials under organized control in place of ignorant provincial governors and hereditary chieftains welded the loose agglomeration of feudatory dependencies into the modern, homogeneous state.

In the year 1863, Norodom, whom Siam had placed upon the Cambodian throne, made a treaty with France, now master of Annam, by which he accepted French protection; at almost the same time he made an exactly similar compact with Siam. Thus each country found itself responsible for the protection of Cambodia against any possible aggressor, while each was given the sole right of dictating the foreign policy of that state. So absurd a situation could not last and, after 4 years of negotiation, Siam was compelled to yield to the French thesis of their superior rights as successors to the Annamese kings, to abrogate her treaty of 1863, and to abandon all claim to suzerainty over Cambodia.

Soon after Siam's withdrawal from Cambodia, the unofficial advocates of colonialism in France began to advance the idea that certain Siamese provinces east of the river Me Khong, having at one time