Burmese Sack Ayutthaya

April 7, 1766

Konbaung armies, led by Hsinbyushin, besieged the Siamese capital after a year's blockade. When it fell in April 1767, they burned the 400-year-old royal city - palaces, monasteries, libraries - to the ground. Siam's monarchy fled; its history had to be rewritten from monks' memories. The destruction was so thorough that modern Thai historians still rely on Burmese and European sources to reconstruct the kingdom's final century.