Honestly, I am not one hundred percent sure, but you could test it out easily enough. Load up one of the german minors, type in the huge money cheat, hire a bunch of mercs and conquer bavaria or Bohemia and see if it allows you to vassalize them.
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Before going to war with a colonial power, DO make sure that you have GARRISONS. And lots of them. I just hope that the war is just with the Portugese, and nobody else joins them.
I must agree with Jwolf. To hell with Bali. I would differentiate my strategy to keep as much of China as possible. RAISE COMFUCIAN TOLERANCE, I would...
May I suggest a change in strategy then? Since Africa is already taken and America too far, how about reverting to WAR? I mean, I understand that you have a high BB score, but that is to be expected.
So, I would suggest massive investment in weapons manufactories and using up all your missionaries. Then, go for China, (and stay there this time!)
As for Portugal, the sooner you finish the better. I must say that I thgink that you really did go too far here, and just hope you won't regret it, since most European (and especially Catholic countries with latin culture have a BIG tech advantage).
Again, the best of luck to the Elephant. May he carry artillery with grace
I must agree with Jwolf. To hell with Bali. I would differentiate my strategy to keep as much of China as possible. RAISE COMFUCIAN TOLERANCE, I would...
May I suggest a change in strategy then? Since Africa is already taken and America too far, how about reverting to WAR? I mean, I understand that you have a high BB score, but that is to be expected.
So, I would suggest massive investment in weapons manufactories and using up all your missionaries. Then, go for China, (and stay there this time!)
As for Portugal, the sooner you finish the better. I must say that I thgink that you really did go too far here, and just hope you won't regret it, since most European (and especially Catholic countries with latin culture have a BIG tech advantage).
Again, the best of luck to the Elephant. May he carry artillery with grace
The Morion War, 1694 - 1700
The war with Portugal is generally known as the 'Morion War' after the distinctive headgear of Portuguese soldiers (1). It is best described as a series of distinct campaigns.
The Sumatra & Vietnamese Campaigns
King P'ra P'etraja declared war on the ruler of Portugal in the month of September, 1694, protesting Portuguese support of piracy in the Indian Ocean and their occupation of Ajeh in Sumatra - a region clearly within Ayutthaya's sphere of influence. He summoned his vassal rulers to his banner and none denied him, while the so-called 'King' of Portugal could find none to aid him, even in his own barbarian continent (2). An Ayuthayan army, well-equipped with cannon, marched north from Riau and laid siege to the citadel of Ajeh. When, a few weeks later, a small force of ill-equipped barbarians attempted a sally from the fortress, they were soundly defeated by the besiegers and driven in disorder into the jungle. And that was as much of the war as went to plan.
As 1694 drew to its close, the Portuguese in Sumatra rallied and marched south. In December they fought an indecisive battle with an Ayutthayan force in Riau, which drove them away from the citadel but could not prevent them penetrating further south. In the new year, the barbariians unexpectedly emerged in Jambi, drove off an Ayutthayan regiment, seized control of the town and burned its defense works, which were still under construction (3). No sooner had news of this reverse reached the King, than reports came of a second Portuguese incursion, this time in the uplands of Mekong provinces, where several thousand Portuguese troops had crossed the border from Dai Viet (4). Ayutthayan troops, which had been concentrated on the south coast, were hastily rushed north to oppose the invasion.
By the time Ayutthayan forces had reached the area, the Portuguese had crossed back into Dai Viet, to join up with other units which had landed from the sea into Hanoi and Tanh Noah. As the Vietnamese defenders hastily mustered in Wenshan and Lao Cai, the Ayutthayan army made preparations to join them. Their assistance was not needed, however, when the Vietnamese drove the Portuguese away from Hanoi in April. The same month, Jambi was recaptured by Ayutthayan troops and the Portuguese occupiers destroyed.
To counter the threat of further Portuguese raids, efforts were made to bolster the defences of the Wewak gold mines, and to build up the settlements in southern Borneo (5). The Sultan of Brunei used the latter as an excuse to make trouble over the boundaries on that island, and P'ra P'etraja thought it wise to make strategic concessions along the border of Sarawak (6). One enemy at a time was his preference, even though the Portuguese had not as yet proved a significant challenge.
In May 1695, the Portuguese landed in Malacca.
The Malacca Campaign
At first, the Portuguese were reported as only a scouting force, but in the weeks that followed, they brought whole regiments of Cantonese infantry (7) ashore and commenced a siege of the city. In July, Portuguese warships drove off the patrolling Ayutthayan squadron in the southern Gulf of Siam and were now in a position to land further reinforcements in the Malay penninsula. Meanwhile, Ayutthayan forces had withdrawn from the North and were massing in Phuket province. This redeployment, necessary to save Malacca, unfortunately meant leaving the Vietnamese to their fate. By June the Portuguese had returned to Hanoi in force and were besieging the capital with more than twelve thousand men. In August, though the walls of his capital still stood and he maintained thousands of troops in the field, the 'Emperor' of Dai Viet cravenly submitted to the barbarians and withdrew from the war.
Also in August the Ayutthayan forces in Phuket were finally ready to move. Brushing aside Portuguese raiding detachments which had ranged into Perak province, they reached Malacca in October and scattered the besiegers. A few weeks later, the Ayutthayan Navy successfully resisted a Portuguese attempt to penetrate to the head of the Gulf of Siam and as the armies in Malacca continued to beat off small-scale Portuguese landing attempts, the King could hope that the campaign was turning in his favour (8).
It was not to be. Despite continued defeats in Malacca, the barbarians were able to make a successful landing in Perak province early in 1696. The next month, a Portuguese fleet of more than twenty galleons forced the Gulf of Siam. Ayutthaya's generals did their best to maintain the morale and strength of their forces - even sending a raiding force into Dai Viet to ambush and destroy a Portuguese detachment that had not withdrawn with the peace - but the tides of battle and the flow of reinforcements were moving inexorably against them. In April, the main southern army, much depleted by six months of continual fighting, was driven out of Malacca by yet another Portuguese landing. The retreating columns were promptly ambushed by Portuguese raiders in Perak (9) and driven back to Phuket, where they barely rallied to turn back their pursuers. In the same month (May), a Portuguese squadron appeared in the Indian Ocean and drove off the Ayutthayan fleet that was supporting the ongoing siege of Ajeh (10). It was around this time that the King of Annam, now facing incursions from the Portuguese forces that had harried Dai Viet, sent an indignant message to the King, complaining that Ayutthaya was not 'prosecuting the war with sufficient vigour' (11).
Much more serious news came soon after, when the Portuguese in Malacca, now several thousand strong, attempted to assault the city. The attack was beaten off, but the good news was swiftly overshadowed when the Ayutthayan Army, hastening south to the relief of Malacca, was surprised in Perak by Portuguese reinforcements (12) and driven into headlong retreat. The victorious Portuguese marched south to Malacca, where they launced a second, larger, assault on the city.
The conduct of the Malacca garrison is the one bright spot in the record of the campaign. Heavily outnumbered, under constant fire from Portuguese muskets and artillery, they stood firm against repeated assaults from more than twenty thousand screaming Cantonese. Barely half the garrison survived the great assault of July/August, and the bombardment died great damage to the city, but the Ayutthayan flag still flew from the battered ramparts when the Ayutthayan field army, now reinforced to over thirty thousand men, once again moved south. Meanwhile, away, from Malacca, other campaigns were turning the Kingdom's way.
The naval defeat off Ajeh had been a setback to the besiegers, but the defenders too were greatly demoralised when they found their 'rescuers' brought no reinforcements and only limited supplies. When the fleet departed for the Burmese coast - there to be defeated by Ayutthayan naval patrols off Mergui and the Irrawaddy - the blockade was restored immediately. Realising they had no hope of relief, the Ajeh garrison surrendered to Ayutthayan forces in September 1696. The victorious army was swiftly embarked on the blockading fleet and set sail for the northeast. Its destination was the Portuguese capital in Asia, the great trade city of Macao in Guangdong (13).
The stubborn resistance of the Malacca garrison bought the Ayutthayan field army time advance. In October 1697, some thirty-three thousand Ayutthayans bore down on the besiegers of Malacca, an enemy they expected to be depleted, dispirited and ravaged by disease. If they were, the besiegers gave little sign of it in the battle that followed. The Portuguese had fortified their camps, and they skillfully diverted the irrigation canals around the city to flood the fields around their positions. The initial Ayutthayan charge stuck in the mud, where the attackers were easy prey for Portuguese musketry. Further attacks fared no better - the dryshod approaches were too exposed and too constricted; and even elephants could not force their way though the artificial swamp which guarded much of the Portuguese line. After more than a dozen futile assualts, the army was driven from the field with heavy losses (14). Predictably, it was again ambushed in Perak during the retreat and less than half the army returned to Phuket. More than thirty thousand men had been lost in the campaign, Malacca was still under siege and morale was at an all time low.
P'ra P'etraja's response was to dismiss the commanders, draft thousands of fresh reinforcements and order another attempt made immediately. In January 1697, the army was once again defeated by inferior forces in Perak. A few weeks later, a large Portuguese fleet appeared off the east coast of the Malay penninsula - to embark their army. The Portuguese were abandoning the siege of Malacca (15).
This decision was so extraordinary that a whole mythology quickly grew up around it. Modern scholarship has had to debunk the plague of rats that appeared to eat the besiegers' rice, the ghostly elephants with a skeletal riders that emerged from the swamp one moonless night to terrify the Cantonese into rout, and the beautiful spy who seduced the Portuguese commander. It appears most likely that the senior Portuguese general in Asia (who was currently besieging Da Nang to little effect) was jealous of his junior's success and sought to bolster his own forces at a rival's expense. Whatever the reason, the barbarians had blundered their best chance of victory. The depleted covering force they had left in Malacca was destroyed in April. The focus of the war now switched to the jungles of Annam and Cambodia, where the Portuguese sought to strip the Kingdom of its allies.
The Annam Campaign
The eastern campaign did not begin well for the Kingdom. The regiments covering Bangkok province were suprised by a Portuguese raiding force and the barbarians burned up to the walls of the capital. Only when the main army returned from the Malay penninsula could the invaders be defeated and driven out. The land war then entered a period of stalemate. The Portuguese continued to besiege Da Nang,and neither the P'ra P'etraja nor his counterpart in Cambodia was willing to risk uncovering his own capital to go to the aid of the Annamese (16). At sea, however, the second half of 1697 went poorly for Ayutthaya, as Portuguese raiders inflicted a series of stinging defeats on the Kingdom's coastal squadrons (17).
However, the most important news of 1697 did not concern the war at all. After many decades of persuasion, and possibly inspired by Ayutthayan patriotism, the recusant clans of Bali finally agreed to accept the teachings of the Buddha (18). On hearing the news, P'ra P'etraja ordered seven days of celebration throught the entire kingdom, a decree that did not endear him to his embattled army, or to the overlooked heroes of Malacca.
1698 opened with the arrival of the Ayutthayan expeditionary force off Macao - where they found the province garrisoned by more than ten thousand fresh troops and covered by a powerful fleet. Chastened, they returned to the Philippines. The news from the main front continued bad - in March an Ayutthayan was defeated by a Portuguese force which had avanced into Cambodia, May brought another naval defeat (off Johor) and in July a small Portuguese force landed in Mindanao and took possession of the undefended colony (19).
The expeditionary army was in position to deal with that problem, and the Portuguese on Mindanao were overwhelmed and destroyed in October. In the meantime, the Annamese had rallied and broken the siege of Da Nang - which did not prove good news, since the King of Annam took advantage of his victory to negotiate a peace with the barbarians.
The Cambodia Campaign
The focus of the war now moved to Cambodia, where the Portuguese army from Annam had been reinforced by fresh landings to over twenty thousand men. This was truly a mighty force, and following their experiences in Malacca and Perak, Ayutthaya's generals were unwilling to tackle it head on. They preferred to delay and let the jungle and the Cambodians take their toll of the attackers (20) while awaiting news of the Expeditionary Army, which had once again sailed for Macao.
The war was now having a serious - and somewhat unexpected - effect on the economy. The draft for the Malacca campaign - the largest in the Kingdom's history - caused a general fall in agricultural prices, as communities deprived of their menfolk sold the land they could no longer farm and the animals they could no longer feed. Gold shipments from Wewak and Enkan had been suspended for the duration of hostilities, causing a general shortage of specie, and much coin - payment to the armies - had been lost in the swamps and jungles of Malaysia. Coupled with general pessimism about the course of the war, this led to an increased demand for coin, and by 1699 Ayutthayan paper currency was trading eleven-for-ten against coins of equal face value. The Ministry of Revenue realised what was going on, and cannily stopped the production of notes, instead issuing vast quantities of small change from the Sarakham mints. This fiscal jugglery allowed the war to be financed considerably more easily than might otherwise have been the case (21).
The first part of Ayutthaya's strategy in the Cambodia campaign fell apart quickly. The Expeditionary Army arrived again off Macao in February to discover that the Portuguese field army there had been reinforced to twenty thousand (22). The Army declined to attempt a landing and returned to Luzon.
The second part, on the other hand, worked perfectly. Hunger, disease and repeated Cambodian attacks steadily diminished the Portuguese army ouside Phnom Penh, and in August Ayutthayan forces came down from the hills to rout the barbarians in two battles.
It was just at this point that the Sultan of Delhi, supported by the Sultan of Brunei and the Khan of the Uzbeks, chose to declare war on the Kingdom (23).
The Bombay Incident, 1699.
The 'war' that followed was short and sharp. Ayutthayan warships attained an ascendancy over the Sultan's vessels off the Indian coast, and the Bombay garrison won a minor victory against the advance guard of the Sultan's army in Gujerat; but Ayutthaya's soldiers had no answer to the horde that poured into the Bombay region towards the end of 1699. By November, with the city under assault by more than fifty thousand Indian soldiers (24), the Guild of Indian Trade decided to cut their losses and offered the Sultan a hefty bribe to desist. The Sultan chose to take the easy money, and so the 'Bombay Incident' came to a conclusion after a little less than three months' fighting.
The End of the Morion War
Meanwhile war still raged through eastern Ayutthaya and northern Cambodia. Just as they had in Sumatra at the start of the war, the Portuguese attempted to slip past their Ayutthayan opponents, to reform behind them and strike again; but this time the Kingdom's soldiers had the mastery and would allow them no respite (25). The fragments of the Portuguese army - and other forces that landed to support them - were harried from pillar to post, never given time to rest or reform into a truly dangerous force. It took six months, a dozen forced marches, a score of nameless battles and the devastation of three provinces (26), but in the invaders were hunted to forgotten ends in the jungle.
The end is nigh for the Portuguese in Cambodia
In January 1700, in the ashes of a ruined village in the east of Bangkok province, the Portuguese General of Asia, haggard and half-starved, surrendered his sword to Ayutthayan soldiers. The formal abandonment of his monarch's claim to Ajeh was no more than a matter of time (27).
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Notes
(1) I was Land tech 18, Naval tech 5; Portugal was about 26/23 - i.e one CRT up on land and two or three at sea.
(2) I had checked that Portugal had no allies.
(3) Arrrgh!! I'd miscalculated how long it would take to build a fort in Jambi. There were 21 Portuguese left when my troops ran away.
(4) It was one of those 'They're invading where?!' moments.
(5) I finally started upgrading the TPs in Bandjarmasin & Selantan to colonies. TPs can be burned, colonies can't.
(6) Settled Boundary Dispute with Brunei, April 1695.
(7) The 'Portuguese' troops for this war were all raised in Guangdong (at least I never saw a fleet bringing reinforcements from Europe). Imagine thousands of Chinese in seventeenth-century European uniforms...
(8) My plan was to take Ajeh and run up enough warscore from small battles to be able to demand it.
(9) Gah. I hate it when they drop a minimal force on your retreating army - which is then defeated instantly because it's at zero morale.
(10) Gnash! One of my problems in this war was that I only had one major fleet, which could maintain only an intermittant blockade on Ajeh. Even when it didn't lose to one Portuguese ship.
(11) Diplomatic Insult, May 1696. Pause for hollow laughter.
(12) It was doing fine against 5,000 Portuguese - then they landed another 10,000...
(13) Having counted 30,000 Portuguese troops already, they couldn't have much left in Guangdong....
(14) Arrrghhh!! If I'd just won this battle (with 33,000 against 21,000; cavalry advantage, morale advantage, attrition advantage...), I'd have had enough warscore to demand Ajeh. Instead, my army got slaughtered. This was the beginning of a six-month period when I simply could not win a battle, regardless of odds, morale, terrain or anything else.
(15) Never let it be said that the AI suffers from strategy.
(16) Translation - there were 20,000 Cambodians sitting in Cambodia (support 10) between me and Annam. I really didn't fancy taking 20%+ attrition for the fun of attacking 15,000 Portuguese in mountains.
(17)This was my fault. I needed a few percent more warscore from somewhere and my galleys had done pretty well so far, so I thought I'd take on the single Portuguese galleons that were wandering around my coasts. Naturally, I lost. Every time.
(18) and an elephant-sized raspberry to everyone who said I should abandon the place. Sometimes if you beat your head on the wall long enough, it does fall down.
(19) This was not something that worried me. The more Portuguese troops that landed on one-province islands with no retreat, the better.
(20) EUII Oddity - Attrition being what it is, my main objective was trying to make sure that I and the Cambodians didn't attack the Portuguese at the same time.
(21) I think this is dodgy economics - but how do you explain a deflation event in the middle of a major war?
(22) No, I don't know where the Portuguese were getting them from, either.
(23) I had fantasies of being able to get Sabah from Brunei in a defensive war...
(24) ...which evaporated pretty quickly once I counted past 80,000 soldiers invading Bombay/Goa. Peace cost me 275 ducats. Cheap at the price.
(25)There were umpteen small Portuguese forces retreating here, there and everywhere. They seemed to recover morale pretty quick, too.
(26) The main casualty was my Weapons Manufactory in Laos, which burned in one of the battles.
(27) Having gained around 20% warscore playing whack-a-mole in Cambodia, I could demand Ajeh.
The Impaler - good to see you! The Treaty is one of those historical Events that could use a stricter trigger - when it fired this time, China was half-a-dozen provinces along the Yellow River and Russia hadn't taken Astrakhan and was being slapped around by Sweden.
jwolf - Unfortunately, I don't know enough about Hensius & John Locke to come up with appropriate koans.
Semi-Lobster - see the top of the post. I think the answer was 'sort of'.
Machiavellian - I'm sure I've read an AAR where Japan vassalised China in the 1420s. I'll try the million mercenaries check when I have more time.
Keravnos - Thank-you for your confidence in me. I knew Portugal had an advantage in tech, but I was expecting to have a big advantage in numbers, and the AI is very bad at commiting sufficient forces to an overseas war (witness Portugal's endless indecisive wars against Benin/Kongo/Zimbabwe/etc). As for China, I have raised Konfucian tolerance)) and Guangzhou is looking like a possibility; but this is 1.05 and the BB war is a hard limit at 36BB. I go over that and everyone in Asia (plus the Netherlands) DOWs me. As often as they can. And given my lack of diplomats, odds are I'd end up disintegrating from war exhaustion.
The war with Portugal is generally known as the 'Morion War' after the distinctive headgear of Portuguese soldiers (1). It is best described as a series of distinct campaigns.
The Sumatra & Vietnamese Campaigns
King P'ra P'etraja declared war on the ruler of Portugal in the month of September, 1694, protesting Portuguese support of piracy in the Indian Ocean and their occupation of Ajeh in Sumatra - a region clearly within Ayutthaya's sphere of influence. He summoned his vassal rulers to his banner and none denied him, while the so-called 'King' of Portugal could find none to aid him, even in his own barbarian continent (2). An Ayuthayan army, well-equipped with cannon, marched north from Riau and laid siege to the citadel of Ajeh. When, a few weeks later, a small force of ill-equipped barbarians attempted a sally from the fortress, they were soundly defeated by the besiegers and driven in disorder into the jungle. And that was as much of the war as went to plan.
As 1694 drew to its close, the Portuguese in Sumatra rallied and marched south. In December they fought an indecisive battle with an Ayutthayan force in Riau, which drove them away from the citadel but could not prevent them penetrating further south. In the new year, the barbariians unexpectedly emerged in Jambi, drove off an Ayutthayan regiment, seized control of the town and burned its defense works, which were still under construction (3). No sooner had news of this reverse reached the King, than reports came of a second Portuguese incursion, this time in the uplands of Mekong provinces, where several thousand Portuguese troops had crossed the border from Dai Viet (4). Ayutthayan troops, which had been concentrated on the south coast, were hastily rushed north to oppose the invasion.
By the time Ayutthayan forces had reached the area, the Portuguese had crossed back into Dai Viet, to join up with other units which had landed from the sea into Hanoi and Tanh Noah. As the Vietnamese defenders hastily mustered in Wenshan and Lao Cai, the Ayutthayan army made preparations to join them. Their assistance was not needed, however, when the Vietnamese drove the Portuguese away from Hanoi in April. The same month, Jambi was recaptured by Ayutthayan troops and the Portuguese occupiers destroyed.
To counter the threat of further Portuguese raids, efforts were made to bolster the defences of the Wewak gold mines, and to build up the settlements in southern Borneo (5). The Sultan of Brunei used the latter as an excuse to make trouble over the boundaries on that island, and P'ra P'etraja thought it wise to make strategic concessions along the border of Sarawak (6). One enemy at a time was his preference, even though the Portuguese had not as yet proved a significant challenge.
In May 1695, the Portuguese landed in Malacca.
The Malacca Campaign
At first, the Portuguese were reported as only a scouting force, but in the weeks that followed, they brought whole regiments of Cantonese infantry (7) ashore and commenced a siege of the city. In July, Portuguese warships drove off the patrolling Ayutthayan squadron in the southern Gulf of Siam and were now in a position to land further reinforcements in the Malay penninsula. Meanwhile, Ayutthayan forces had withdrawn from the North and were massing in Phuket province. This redeployment, necessary to save Malacca, unfortunately meant leaving the Vietnamese to their fate. By June the Portuguese had returned to Hanoi in force and were besieging the capital with more than twelve thousand men. In August, though the walls of his capital still stood and he maintained thousands of troops in the field, the 'Emperor' of Dai Viet cravenly submitted to the barbarians and withdrew from the war.
Also in August the Ayutthayan forces in Phuket were finally ready to move. Brushing aside Portuguese raiding detachments which had ranged into Perak province, they reached Malacca in October and scattered the besiegers. A few weeks later, the Ayutthayan Navy successfully resisted a Portuguese attempt to penetrate to the head of the Gulf of Siam and as the armies in Malacca continued to beat off small-scale Portuguese landing attempts, the King could hope that the campaign was turning in his favour (8).
It was not to be. Despite continued defeats in Malacca, the barbarians were able to make a successful landing in Perak province early in 1696. The next month, a Portuguese fleet of more than twenty galleons forced the Gulf of Siam. Ayutthaya's generals did their best to maintain the morale and strength of their forces - even sending a raiding force into Dai Viet to ambush and destroy a Portuguese detachment that had not withdrawn with the peace - but the tides of battle and the flow of reinforcements were moving inexorably against them. In April, the main southern army, much depleted by six months of continual fighting, was driven out of Malacca by yet another Portuguese landing. The retreating columns were promptly ambushed by Portuguese raiders in Perak (9) and driven back to Phuket, where they barely rallied to turn back their pursuers. In the same month (May), a Portuguese squadron appeared in the Indian Ocean and drove off the Ayutthayan fleet that was supporting the ongoing siege of Ajeh (10). It was around this time that the King of Annam, now facing incursions from the Portuguese forces that had harried Dai Viet, sent an indignant message to the King, complaining that Ayutthaya was not 'prosecuting the war with sufficient vigour' (11).
Much more serious news came soon after, when the Portuguese in Malacca, now several thousand strong, attempted to assault the city. The attack was beaten off, but the good news was swiftly overshadowed when the Ayutthayan Army, hastening south to the relief of Malacca, was surprised in Perak by Portuguese reinforcements (12) and driven into headlong retreat. The victorious Portuguese marched south to Malacca, where they launced a second, larger, assault on the city.
The conduct of the Malacca garrison is the one bright spot in the record of the campaign. Heavily outnumbered, under constant fire from Portuguese muskets and artillery, they stood firm against repeated assaults from more than twenty thousand screaming Cantonese. Barely half the garrison survived the great assault of July/August, and the bombardment died great damage to the city, but the Ayutthayan flag still flew from the battered ramparts when the Ayutthayan field army, now reinforced to over thirty thousand men, once again moved south. Meanwhile, away, from Malacca, other campaigns were turning the Kingdom's way.
The naval defeat off Ajeh had been a setback to the besiegers, but the defenders too were greatly demoralised when they found their 'rescuers' brought no reinforcements and only limited supplies. When the fleet departed for the Burmese coast - there to be defeated by Ayutthayan naval patrols off Mergui and the Irrawaddy - the blockade was restored immediately. Realising they had no hope of relief, the Ajeh garrison surrendered to Ayutthayan forces in September 1696. The victorious army was swiftly embarked on the blockading fleet and set sail for the northeast. Its destination was the Portuguese capital in Asia, the great trade city of Macao in Guangdong (13).
The stubborn resistance of the Malacca garrison bought the Ayutthayan field army time advance. In October 1697, some thirty-three thousand Ayutthayans bore down on the besiegers of Malacca, an enemy they expected to be depleted, dispirited and ravaged by disease. If they were, the besiegers gave little sign of it in the battle that followed. The Portuguese had fortified their camps, and they skillfully diverted the irrigation canals around the city to flood the fields around their positions. The initial Ayutthayan charge stuck in the mud, where the attackers were easy prey for Portuguese musketry. Further attacks fared no better - the dryshod approaches were too exposed and too constricted; and even elephants could not force their way though the artificial swamp which guarded much of the Portuguese line. After more than a dozen futile assualts, the army was driven from the field with heavy losses (14). Predictably, it was again ambushed in Perak during the retreat and less than half the army returned to Phuket. More than thirty thousand men had been lost in the campaign, Malacca was still under siege and morale was at an all time low.
P'ra P'etraja's response was to dismiss the commanders, draft thousands of fresh reinforcements and order another attempt made immediately. In January 1697, the army was once again defeated by inferior forces in Perak. A few weeks later, a large Portuguese fleet appeared off the east coast of the Malay penninsula - to embark their army. The Portuguese were abandoning the siege of Malacca (15).
This decision was so extraordinary that a whole mythology quickly grew up around it. Modern scholarship has had to debunk the plague of rats that appeared to eat the besiegers' rice, the ghostly elephants with a skeletal riders that emerged from the swamp one moonless night to terrify the Cantonese into rout, and the beautiful spy who seduced the Portuguese commander. It appears most likely that the senior Portuguese general in Asia (who was currently besieging Da Nang to little effect) was jealous of his junior's success and sought to bolster his own forces at a rival's expense. Whatever the reason, the barbarians had blundered their best chance of victory. The depleted covering force they had left in Malacca was destroyed in April. The focus of the war now switched to the jungles of Annam and Cambodia, where the Portuguese sought to strip the Kingdom of its allies.
The Annam Campaign
The eastern campaign did not begin well for the Kingdom. The regiments covering Bangkok province were suprised by a Portuguese raiding force and the barbarians burned up to the walls of the capital. Only when the main army returned from the Malay penninsula could the invaders be defeated and driven out. The land war then entered a period of stalemate. The Portuguese continued to besiege Da Nang,and neither the P'ra P'etraja nor his counterpart in Cambodia was willing to risk uncovering his own capital to go to the aid of the Annamese (16). At sea, however, the second half of 1697 went poorly for Ayutthaya, as Portuguese raiders inflicted a series of stinging defeats on the Kingdom's coastal squadrons (17).
However, the most important news of 1697 did not concern the war at all. After many decades of persuasion, and possibly inspired by Ayutthayan patriotism, the recusant clans of Bali finally agreed to accept the teachings of the Buddha (18). On hearing the news, P'ra P'etraja ordered seven days of celebration throught the entire kingdom, a decree that did not endear him to his embattled army, or to the overlooked heroes of Malacca.
1698 opened with the arrival of the Ayutthayan expeditionary force off Macao - where they found the province garrisoned by more than ten thousand fresh troops and covered by a powerful fleet. Chastened, they returned to the Philippines. The news from the main front continued bad - in March an Ayutthayan was defeated by a Portuguese force which had avanced into Cambodia, May brought another naval defeat (off Johor) and in July a small Portuguese force landed in Mindanao and took possession of the undefended colony (19).
The expeditionary army was in position to deal with that problem, and the Portuguese on Mindanao were overwhelmed and destroyed in October. In the meantime, the Annamese had rallied and broken the siege of Da Nang - which did not prove good news, since the King of Annam took advantage of his victory to negotiate a peace with the barbarians.
The Cambodia Campaign
The focus of the war now moved to Cambodia, where the Portuguese army from Annam had been reinforced by fresh landings to over twenty thousand men. This was truly a mighty force, and following their experiences in Malacca and Perak, Ayutthaya's generals were unwilling to tackle it head on. They preferred to delay and let the jungle and the Cambodians take their toll of the attackers (20) while awaiting news of the Expeditionary Army, which had once again sailed for Macao.
The war was now having a serious - and somewhat unexpected - effect on the economy. The draft for the Malacca campaign - the largest in the Kingdom's history - caused a general fall in agricultural prices, as communities deprived of their menfolk sold the land they could no longer farm and the animals they could no longer feed. Gold shipments from Wewak and Enkan had been suspended for the duration of hostilities, causing a general shortage of specie, and much coin - payment to the armies - had been lost in the swamps and jungles of Malaysia. Coupled with general pessimism about the course of the war, this led to an increased demand for coin, and by 1699 Ayutthayan paper currency was trading eleven-for-ten against coins of equal face value. The Ministry of Revenue realised what was going on, and cannily stopped the production of notes, instead issuing vast quantities of small change from the Sarakham mints. This fiscal jugglery allowed the war to be financed considerably more easily than might otherwise have been the case (21).
The first part of Ayutthaya's strategy in the Cambodia campaign fell apart quickly. The Expeditionary Army arrived again off Macao in February to discover that the Portuguese field army there had been reinforced to twenty thousand (22). The Army declined to attempt a landing and returned to Luzon.
The second part, on the other hand, worked perfectly. Hunger, disease and repeated Cambodian attacks steadily diminished the Portuguese army ouside Phnom Penh, and in August Ayutthayan forces came down from the hills to rout the barbarians in two battles.
It was just at this point that the Sultan of Delhi, supported by the Sultan of Brunei and the Khan of the Uzbeks, chose to declare war on the Kingdom (23).
The Bombay Incident, 1699.
The 'war' that followed was short and sharp. Ayutthayan warships attained an ascendancy over the Sultan's vessels off the Indian coast, and the Bombay garrison won a minor victory against the advance guard of the Sultan's army in Gujerat; but Ayutthaya's soldiers had no answer to the horde that poured into the Bombay region towards the end of 1699. By November, with the city under assault by more than fifty thousand Indian soldiers (24), the Guild of Indian Trade decided to cut their losses and offered the Sultan a hefty bribe to desist. The Sultan chose to take the easy money, and so the 'Bombay Incident' came to a conclusion after a little less than three months' fighting.
The End of the Morion War
Meanwhile war still raged through eastern Ayutthaya and northern Cambodia. Just as they had in Sumatra at the start of the war, the Portuguese attempted to slip past their Ayutthayan opponents, to reform behind them and strike again; but this time the Kingdom's soldiers had the mastery and would allow them no respite (25). The fragments of the Portuguese army - and other forces that landed to support them - were harried from pillar to post, never given time to rest or reform into a truly dangerous force. It took six months, a dozen forced marches, a score of nameless battles and the devastation of three provinces (26), but in the invaders were hunted to forgotten ends in the jungle.
The end is nigh for the Portuguese in Cambodia
In January 1700, in the ashes of a ruined village in the east of Bangkok province, the Portuguese General of Asia, haggard and half-starved, surrendered his sword to Ayutthayan soldiers. The formal abandonment of his monarch's claim to Ajeh was no more than a matter of time (27).
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Notes
(1) I was Land tech 18, Naval tech 5; Portugal was about 26/23 - i.e one CRT up on land and two or three at sea.
(2) I had checked that Portugal had no allies.
(3) Arrrgh!! I'd miscalculated how long it would take to build a fort in Jambi. There were 21 Portuguese left when my troops ran away.
(4) It was one of those 'They're invading where?!' moments.
(5) I finally started upgrading the TPs in Bandjarmasin & Selantan to colonies. TPs can be burned, colonies can't.
(6) Settled Boundary Dispute with Brunei, April 1695.
(7) The 'Portuguese' troops for this war were all raised in Guangdong (at least I never saw a fleet bringing reinforcements from Europe). Imagine thousands of Chinese in seventeenth-century European uniforms...
(8) My plan was to take Ajeh and run up enough warscore from small battles to be able to demand it.
(9) Gah. I hate it when they drop a minimal force on your retreating army - which is then defeated instantly because it's at zero morale.
(10) Gnash! One of my problems in this war was that I only had one major fleet, which could maintain only an intermittant blockade on Ajeh. Even when it didn't lose to one Portuguese ship.
(11) Diplomatic Insult, May 1696. Pause for hollow laughter.
(12) It was doing fine against 5,000 Portuguese - then they landed another 10,000...
(13) Having counted 30,000 Portuguese troops already, they couldn't have much left in Guangdong....
(14) Arrrghhh!! If I'd just won this battle (with 33,000 against 21,000; cavalry advantage, morale advantage, attrition advantage...), I'd have had enough warscore to demand Ajeh. Instead, my army got slaughtered. This was the beginning of a six-month period when I simply could not win a battle, regardless of odds, morale, terrain or anything else.
(15) Never let it be said that the AI suffers from strategy.
(16) Translation - there were 20,000 Cambodians sitting in Cambodia (support 10) between me and Annam. I really didn't fancy taking 20%+ attrition for the fun of attacking 15,000 Portuguese in mountains.
(17)This was my fault. I needed a few percent more warscore from somewhere and my galleys had done pretty well so far, so I thought I'd take on the single Portuguese galleons that were wandering around my coasts. Naturally, I lost. Every time.
(18)
and an elephant-sized raspberry to everyone who said I should abandon the place. Sometimes if you beat your head on the wall long enough, it does fall down.(19) This was not something that worried me. The more Portuguese troops that landed on one-province islands with no retreat, the better.
(20) EUII Oddity - Attrition being what it is, my main objective was trying to make sure that I and the Cambodians didn't attack the Portuguese at the same time.
(21) I think this is dodgy economics - but how do you explain a deflation event in the middle of a major war?
(22) No, I don't know where the Portuguese were getting them from, either.
(23) I had fantasies of being able to get Sabah from Brunei in a defensive war...
(24) ...which evaporated pretty quickly once I counted past 80,000 soldiers invading Bombay/Goa. Peace cost me 275 ducats. Cheap at the price.
(25)There were umpteen small Portuguese forces retreating here, there and everywhere. They seemed to recover morale pretty quick, too.
(26) The main casualty was my Weapons Manufactory in Laos, which burned in one of the battles.
(27) Having gained around 20% warscore playing whack-a-mole in Cambodia, I could demand Ajeh.
The Impaler - good to see you! The Treaty is one of those historical Events that could use a stricter trigger - when it fired this time, China was half-a-dozen provinces along the Yellow River and Russia hadn't taken Astrakhan and was being slapped around by Sweden.
jwolf - Unfortunately, I don't know enough about Hensius & John Locke to come up with appropriate koans.
Semi-Lobster - see the top of the post. I think the answer was 'sort of'.
Machiavellian - I'm sure I've read an AAR where Japan vassalised China in the 1420s. I'll try the million mercenaries check when I have more time.
Keravnos - Thank-you for your confidence in me. I knew Portugal had an advantage in tech, but I was expecting to have a big advantage in numbers, and the AI is very bad at commiting sufficient forces to an overseas war (witness Portugal's endless indecisive wars against Benin/Kongo/Zimbabwe/etc). As for China, I have raised Konfucian tolerance
)) and Guangzhou is looking like a possibility; but this is 1.05 and the BB war is a hard limit at 36BB. I go over that and everyone in Asia (plus the Netherlands) DOWs me. As often as they can. And given my lack of diplomats, odds are I'd end up disintegrating from war exhaustion.
Last edited:
That war was just one bad thing after another, but it's good to see you come up on top, especially with that conversion!
I'm really impressed that you fought and persevered until you had victory! Very well done, and to tell you the truth, I really didn't think you could get Atjeh from the Portuguese. In my Dai Viet game Portugal had only one province in Indonesia -- a COT on the island of Celebes. I never even tried to fight them for it because I figured there was no way I would be able to take it in a peace deal. You have shown me the error of my ways.
I, too, have seen an otherwise successful AI campaign ruined by prematurely breaking a siege I couldn't reasonably have defended against anyway. Just part of life for the AI. In spite of this, it seems that the AI gave you a pretty good fight. Congratulations for winning that war!
And congratulations for converting Bali. How many attempts did it take?
I, too, have seen an otherwise successful AI campaign ruined by prematurely breaking a siege I couldn't reasonably have defended against anyway. Just part of life for the AI. In spite of this, it seems that the AI gave you a pretty good fight. Congratulations for winning that war!
And congratulations for converting Bali. How many attempts did it take?
Well fought and well won.
It seems that this war has proved a great triumph for the Elephant throne, for it now shows that not even the west can challenge the rising strength of this growing Empire.
It seems that this war has proved a great triumph for the Elephant throne, for it now shows that not even the west can challenge the rising strength of this growing Empire.
Very well done, sir!
Of course, cautious and conservative old shell-back that I am, I must point out that you may never receive as much money from Ajeh as you spent to take it...
But Glory, sir, and Honor, sir, surely these are priceless!
I remember once - in my early days with EU2 - I played China. And enjoyed most of it (this was v 1.03, I think).
What I did not enjoy was being forced to hand over one of my richest provinces to the blasted Portuguese. And then, when I declared war to get it back, they ignored me and refused all peace offers. So my empire fell completely apart! and I abandoned that game in disgust.
At least things didn't degenerate to the point that you had to depend on rebels to defeat the invaders!
Anyway, congrats on standing up to the Europeans. And don't you - really now - don't you think the time has come to cripple those blasted Bruneians?
Of course, cautious and conservative old shell-back that I am, I must point out that you may never receive as much money from Ajeh as you spent to take it...
But Glory, sir, and Honor, sir, surely these are priceless!
I remember once - in my early days with EU2 - I played China. And enjoyed most of it (this was v 1.03, I think).
What I did not enjoy was being forced to hand over one of my richest provinces to the blasted Portuguese. And then, when I declared war to get it back, they ignored me and refused all peace offers. So my empire fell completely apart! and I abandoned that game in disgust.
At least things didn't degenerate to the point that you had to depend on rebels to defeat the invaders!
Anyway, congrats on standing up to the Europeans. And don't you - really now - don't you think the time has come to cripple those blasted Bruneians?
Well, like Jwolf, I really thought that you bit more than you could chew. Happy I was wrong. Now with the bali out of the heathens list I think the way is clear... sort of. I HAD forgotten of the 36 Hardline for BB.
Nope, no BB wars. Not ever again !
So, since you effectively ruled out china, what now for the "Oh light as a feather Ayutthayan Pachyderm"? (Authentic quote of an Ayutthayan Courtisan)
Nope, no BB wars. Not ever again !
So, since you effectively ruled out china, what now for the "Oh light as a feather Ayutthayan Pachyderm"? (Authentic quote of an Ayutthayan Courtisan)
Chapter 18c - P'ra P'etraja (fl1694 - 1703) & P'rachao Sua (1703 - fl1704)
While We Were Fighting - Abroad
The years of the Morion War (1694-1699) (1) were not wholly without incident in the world outside Ayutthaya. Admittedly 1694-5 were somewhat uneventful, and 1696 noted only for such mundanities as a declaration of peace by Delhi on Persia and England's making peace with the Huron in order to make war with the Iroqouis, but early 1697 saw the warbanners once again raised in China, as the Northern Ming, supported by the Shogun of Nippon, sought to reclaim the Forbidden City from its Korean occupiers. This adventure proved a poor gamble on the part of the Ming, as the Qing came to the aid of the Koreans and the northern Ming capital fell to siege by the warriors of Choson.
Shortly afterwards, in far-off Europe, the Russians created a so-called 'Grand Alliance' in that troubled continent's Northern Conflict, celebrated by annexing two provinces from Sibir and then made war upon the Uzbeks. Ust Urt was annexed the next year, but by then the Russians were busy with European affairs and showed little inclination to push further East. The same year, the Netherlands declared war on the Xhosa (again) and the Ottomans made peace with the Mamelukes (rather to the bemusement of Ayutthaya's Scholars of the West, who didn't know they were fighting in the first place). A few months later, in the summer of 1699, the Qing, realising they had no quarrel with the Shogunate, made peace with Nippon.
At Home
It should also be noted that civil affairs in Ayutthaya itself did not cease for the duration of the war, althought they were necessarily overshadowed by military operations. Settlement on the Ice Coast (where Okhotsk had been recognised as a province in 1694) was interrupted by the diversion of men and ships to the task of securing Borneo and Indonesia, but progress continued elsewhere. In the West, the settlement in Pondicherry, India, grew to such an extent that it was recognised as a province in its own right immediately after the war; while closer to home Kalimantan was fortified in 1699 (in light of the threat from Brunei) and Jambi followed (this time without incident) in 1700. Perhaps the most noteworthy event in Indonesia in this period, though, was a short-lived revolt in Riau (2), brought on by excessive and impolitic promotion of Buddhism by the acting military governor. Another revolt also broke out just before the war ended, this time in Wairoa (3), in the distant Far Islands.
Ayutthaya in 1700, shortly after the end of the Morion War
Foreign Affairs after the Morion War
Following their expulsion from Ajeh, the Portuguese sought solace in wars with Zimbabwe (1700-01) and Genoa (1700-02). Neither of these came to anything much, and Portugal declared war on Kongo (again) on conclusion of the Genoan war. Meanwhile, Russia had annexed the Crimea and the Netherlands had made peace with the Xhosa and swiftly become enmeshed (with England) in the war against Philip of Bourbon whose success in Spain they apparently found threatening. In 1702, England broke with tradition by successfully conquering territory from the natives of America (Savannah, from the Creek) and shortly afterwards Persia achieved a spectacular victory over the Uzbeks, claiming four provinces, forcibly converting the (Muslim) Khan to Islam and formalising the right of their armies to pass unopposed over the wreckage of the Khanate.
More importantly from Ayutthaya's point of view, in the following year Portugal was subjected to the Meuthen Agreement and submitted to the overlordship of the King of England. Most Ayutthayan scholars doubted if any nation truly deserved this honour, but all agreed that Portugal was as worthy as any. King P'ra P'etraja regretted the funds the Portuguese would no longer have available to build armies and instructed his merchants and diplomats in Anglia and Columbo to remind the English at every opportunity that Ajeh (and indeed the rest of Ayutthaya) was nowhere near America. The hostilities in northern China continued, though the Ming managed to extract an indemnity from the Qing in early 1701 and the Nipponese eventually withdrew, making peace with Korea at the start of 1703 (Nippon, around this time, was distracted by the famous, tragic and romantic 'Affair of the 47 Ronin'. It ended in the traditional manner of Nipponese stories, with the messy deaths of all concerned).
Domestic Expansion
The revolt in the Far Islands took a long time to put down, not because of the strength of the rebels but from the time it took the Navy to transfer the necessary ships from the Celebes to New Ayutthaya (via Ceram and Wewak). During the months it took, the revolt spread from Wairoa to Whangarei, and was not full supressed until the end of 1700. The Viceroy of New Ayutthaya suggested openly that it would have been quicker to build his own fleet, and indeed suggested such a project to his subordinate governors. The response was favourable, but the necessary funds could not be released as all available revenue had been diverted to another project - the first great industrial enterprise in New Ayutthaya (4). This refinery, completed in 1703, used the abundant grain resources of New Ayutthaya and from the start competed openly with the older Guild-owned enterprises in Java and the Philippines.
Attempts to bring the Ayutthayan Navy up to modern or at least near-modern standards continued through the war, but did not truly bear fruit until 1701, with the launch of the first Ayutthayan-built galleon (5). Ayutthaya's fleets were still greatly inferior to those of Europe, but at least the defence of her coasts no longer lay solely with her old-fashion galleys, which had proven so outmatched in the Morion War. 1701, indeed, proved a very successful year for the Kingdom, for in addition to the construction of the galleons and the Yarra refinery, it was also the year in which the governor of Makassar province reported that his charges had finally forsaken the outmoded teachings of the Prophet to follow the Way of the Buddha (6).
Trade also improved with the end of the Morion War. Unlike the Three Emperors' War a decade earlier, the recent conflict had not been accompanied by a collapse in commerce abroad, and eager traders flocked to make good any temporary setbacks (7). Pleased by the new prosperity, and possibly a little stung by the actions of the Viceroy of New Ayutthaya, the King ordered the construction of a Royal Factory in Phuket province early in 1703 (8), as well as amending the trade laws (9) to encourage lesser merchants and artisans to aspire to Guild rank. When the Guilds complained that the new regulations exposed them to foreign competition, P'ra P'etraja promised them new blood to fight their paper battles - and then abolished outright the Guilds' authority to regulate entry of lesser merchants into the Kingdom's markets (10).
These reforms were P'ra P'etraja's last significant achievements. He was badly injured in a fall from his horse in late January 1703 and died the following month without regaining consciousness. He had no son of age, and so the succession devolved upon his younger brother. No-one knew quite what to expect from this young man, who ascended to the Elephant Throne as P'rachao Sua, for though he had been seen often in the pleasure gardens he was little known in the council chambers (11).
P'rachao Sua
Despite the mutterings, P'rachao Sua's first years in power went suprisingly well (12). Russia, England and Portugal were occupied in wars in Europe, America and Africa respectively; India was quiet, and the Northern Ming still engrossed in attempting to recover their capital from the Koreans. The one blot on the horizon was the Guild of Northern Trade's failure to colonise Vanin. This settlement, intended as no more than a fort to secure the Ice Coast colonies' southern border against the Qing, turned into a second Enkan in the winter of 1703-4. Hundreds of workers were sent to die in the snow and the previously-friendly natves of the region were roused to violence (13).
Domestically, too, there was a period of tranquillity. The new King happily accepted a huge bribe from the Guilds (14), but declined to reverse his brother's reforms. The prestige of the Guilds had been badly damaged by the Vanin affair and they declined to press the issue. The nobility, too, showed no signs of the discontent and factionalism that had blighted P'ra P'etraja's early reign, indeed the Court of P'rachao Sua was a remarkably harmonious place (15).
The harmony came to an abrupt end in December of 1704, when the upstart Sultan of Brunei, supported as ever by Delhi and the remnants of the Uzbeks, rashly declared war. P'ra P'etraja had held off from prosecuting a conflict with Brunei during the Bombay Incident for fear of the havoc Delhi's armies might wreak on the poorly-defended provinces of western India. P'rachao Sua had no such scruples. He ordered his army and navy mobilised for the conquest of Borneo. The Sultan, he swore, would beg... (16)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Notes
(1) Note: Due to my wanting to recount the Morion War to a finish rather than splitting it over multiple posts, the chronology has become a trifle confused. This section starts back in 1694, roughly simultaneously with the war.
(2) Missionary failed, September 1699. I had an army garrisoning Sumatra, so it didn't last long.
(3) Colonial Uprising, December 1699. Naturally on an island where I can't raise troops.
(4) I considered re-building the destroyed Weapons Factory, but having no metal provinces (except Magadan) I decided that a Refinery was probably more useful. Yarra (grain) happens to be my richest available province. (I have any number of grain, sheep, fish and spice provinces, but very little suitable for manufactories).
(5) Naval Tech 7, September 1700; Naval Tech 8, April 1701; Naval Tech 9 (and my first naval CRT), August 1701. I kept the treasury slider at 20% and switched the rest into Trade (More than half my income comes from Trade and I wanted my Trade Efficiency over 100%).
(6) Missionary Successful (!), May 1701.
(7) Rush of Merchants, Decmber 1700.
(8) I like having lots of money. This is Refinery No. 4.
(9) +1 Free Trade, January 1703.
(10) Foreign Trade Competition Rises Event, January 1703. I went with 'Deny New Tariff' for +1 Free Trade (I wanted the extra merchant and colonists). Mercantilism is now 0.
(11) Adm Very Poor, Mil Poor, Dip Very Poor. My monarchs are reverting to type.
(12) Ayutthaya now 61 Provinces, 6 Colonies, 16 TPs, Monthly Income 236, Inflation 0%, Tech 18/9/5/5
(13) I had six consecutive colonists fail in Vanin and the natives got angry and ate my TP.
(14) Gift to State, 400 ducats, December 1703
(15) Noble Familes Feud, October 1704. I went with 'Settle'. What's 100 ducats these days?
(16) If he's going to give me the chance to take Sabah in a defensive war, I'm going to take it. Brunei, by the way, has Land 18, Naval 12 and 50,000(!) men under arms. I am definitely not biting off more than I can chew.
Semi-Lobster & Machiavellian - Thanks for the support and good wishes. That war was just a little closer than planned. I don't think I'll be invading Europe any time soon.
jwolf - My original plan was to take Ajeh & Guangdong and then demand Ajeh. That went sideways quickly, but I was eventually able to get up to +20% warscore just by winning battles, after the AI suicided its armies in Cambodia. (My victory was thanks to the siege rearrangement bug - if the AI had been able to combine all its little armies into one big one I'd never have been able to beat it often enough to win). I'm not sure whether the same tactic would work for a province worth much more than Ajeh's 10%, such as a CoT. Possibly if you have a big fleet and could start kicking isolated ships around...
I took Bali in 1570. In the early years it had 6 'regular' revolts (one of which destroyed an army of mine) plus a Heretics event (which took the fort). Converting it required 8 missionaries (and the requisite 7 revolts). No, I do not want to remember it, thanks.
Director - If I did a cost/benefit calculation on my actions, I'd have released Mataram as a vassal long ago (see above). But there's such a thing as pride, and besides I declared my intention to keep the colonialists (well, the other colonialists) out of South-East Asia back in post 1.
As for Brunei, well, it's funny you should mention it....
While We Were Fighting - Abroad
The years of the Morion War (1694-1699) (1) were not wholly without incident in the world outside Ayutthaya. Admittedly 1694-5 were somewhat uneventful, and 1696 noted only for such mundanities as a declaration of peace by Delhi on Persia and England's making peace with the Huron in order to make war with the Iroqouis, but early 1697 saw the warbanners once again raised in China, as the Northern Ming, supported by the Shogun of Nippon, sought to reclaim the Forbidden City from its Korean occupiers. This adventure proved a poor gamble on the part of the Ming, as the Qing came to the aid of the Koreans and the northern Ming capital fell to siege by the warriors of Choson.
Shortly afterwards, in far-off Europe, the Russians created a so-called 'Grand Alliance' in that troubled continent's Northern Conflict, celebrated by annexing two provinces from Sibir and then made war upon the Uzbeks. Ust Urt was annexed the next year, but by then the Russians were busy with European affairs and showed little inclination to push further East. The same year, the Netherlands declared war on the Xhosa (again) and the Ottomans made peace with the Mamelukes (rather to the bemusement of Ayutthaya's Scholars of the West, who didn't know they were fighting in the first place). A few months later, in the summer of 1699, the Qing, realising they had no quarrel with the Shogunate, made peace with Nippon.
At Home
It should also be noted that civil affairs in Ayutthaya itself did not cease for the duration of the war, althought they were necessarily overshadowed by military operations. Settlement on the Ice Coast (where Okhotsk had been recognised as a province in 1694) was interrupted by the diversion of men and ships to the task of securing Borneo and Indonesia, but progress continued elsewhere. In the West, the settlement in Pondicherry, India, grew to such an extent that it was recognised as a province in its own right immediately after the war; while closer to home Kalimantan was fortified in 1699 (in light of the threat from Brunei) and Jambi followed (this time without incident) in 1700. Perhaps the most noteworthy event in Indonesia in this period, though, was a short-lived revolt in Riau (2), brought on by excessive and impolitic promotion of Buddhism by the acting military governor. Another revolt also broke out just before the war ended, this time in Wairoa (3), in the distant Far Islands.
Ayutthaya in 1700, shortly after the end of the Morion War
Foreign Affairs after the Morion War
Following their expulsion from Ajeh, the Portuguese sought solace in wars with Zimbabwe (1700-01) and Genoa (1700-02). Neither of these came to anything much, and Portugal declared war on Kongo (again) on conclusion of the Genoan war. Meanwhile, Russia had annexed the Crimea and the Netherlands had made peace with the Xhosa and swiftly become enmeshed (with England) in the war against Philip of Bourbon whose success in Spain they apparently found threatening. In 1702, England broke with tradition by successfully conquering territory from the natives of America (Savannah, from the Creek) and shortly afterwards Persia achieved a spectacular victory over the Uzbeks, claiming four provinces, forcibly converting the (Muslim) Khan to Islam and formalising the right of their armies to pass unopposed over the wreckage of the Khanate.
More importantly from Ayutthaya's point of view, in the following year Portugal was subjected to the Meuthen Agreement and submitted to the overlordship of the King of England. Most Ayutthayan scholars doubted if any nation truly deserved this honour, but all agreed that Portugal was as worthy as any. King P'ra P'etraja regretted the funds the Portuguese would no longer have available to build armies and instructed his merchants and diplomats in Anglia and Columbo to remind the English at every opportunity that Ajeh (and indeed the rest of Ayutthaya) was nowhere near America. The hostilities in northern China continued, though the Ming managed to extract an indemnity from the Qing in early 1701 and the Nipponese eventually withdrew, making peace with Korea at the start of 1703 (Nippon, around this time, was distracted by the famous, tragic and romantic 'Affair of the 47 Ronin'. It ended in the traditional manner of Nipponese stories, with the messy deaths of all concerned).
Domestic Expansion
The revolt in the Far Islands took a long time to put down, not because of the strength of the rebels but from the time it took the Navy to transfer the necessary ships from the Celebes to New Ayutthaya (via Ceram and Wewak). During the months it took, the revolt spread from Wairoa to Whangarei, and was not full supressed until the end of 1700. The Viceroy of New Ayutthaya suggested openly that it would have been quicker to build his own fleet, and indeed suggested such a project to his subordinate governors. The response was favourable, but the necessary funds could not be released as all available revenue had been diverted to another project - the first great industrial enterprise in New Ayutthaya (4). This refinery, completed in 1703, used the abundant grain resources of New Ayutthaya and from the start competed openly with the older Guild-owned enterprises in Java and the Philippines.
Attempts to bring the Ayutthayan Navy up to modern or at least near-modern standards continued through the war, but did not truly bear fruit until 1701, with the launch of the first Ayutthayan-built galleon (5). Ayutthaya's fleets were still greatly inferior to those of Europe, but at least the defence of her coasts no longer lay solely with her old-fashion galleys, which had proven so outmatched in the Morion War. 1701, indeed, proved a very successful year for the Kingdom, for in addition to the construction of the galleons and the Yarra refinery, it was also the year in which the governor of Makassar province reported that his charges had finally forsaken the outmoded teachings of the Prophet to follow the Way of the Buddha (6).
Trade also improved with the end of the Morion War. Unlike the Three Emperors' War a decade earlier, the recent conflict had not been accompanied by a collapse in commerce abroad, and eager traders flocked to make good any temporary setbacks (7). Pleased by the new prosperity, and possibly a little stung by the actions of the Viceroy of New Ayutthaya, the King ordered the construction of a Royal Factory in Phuket province early in 1703 (8), as well as amending the trade laws (9) to encourage lesser merchants and artisans to aspire to Guild rank. When the Guilds complained that the new regulations exposed them to foreign competition, P'ra P'etraja promised them new blood to fight their paper battles - and then abolished outright the Guilds' authority to regulate entry of lesser merchants into the Kingdom's markets (10).
These reforms were P'ra P'etraja's last significant achievements. He was badly injured in a fall from his horse in late January 1703 and died the following month without regaining consciousness. He had no son of age, and so the succession devolved upon his younger brother. No-one knew quite what to expect from this young man, who ascended to the Elephant Throne as P'rachao Sua, for though he had been seen often in the pleasure gardens he was little known in the council chambers (11).
P'rachao Sua
Despite the mutterings, P'rachao Sua's first years in power went suprisingly well (12). Russia, England and Portugal were occupied in wars in Europe, America and Africa respectively; India was quiet, and the Northern Ming still engrossed in attempting to recover their capital from the Koreans. The one blot on the horizon was the Guild of Northern Trade's failure to colonise Vanin. This settlement, intended as no more than a fort to secure the Ice Coast colonies' southern border against the Qing, turned into a second Enkan in the winter of 1703-4. Hundreds of workers were sent to die in the snow and the previously-friendly natves of the region were roused to violence (13).
Domestically, too, there was a period of tranquillity. The new King happily accepted a huge bribe from the Guilds (14), but declined to reverse his brother's reforms. The prestige of the Guilds had been badly damaged by the Vanin affair and they declined to press the issue. The nobility, too, showed no signs of the discontent and factionalism that had blighted P'ra P'etraja's early reign, indeed the Court of P'rachao Sua was a remarkably harmonious place (15).
The harmony came to an abrupt end in December of 1704, when the upstart Sultan of Brunei, supported as ever by Delhi and the remnants of the Uzbeks, rashly declared war. P'ra P'etraja had held off from prosecuting a conflict with Brunei during the Bombay Incident for fear of the havoc Delhi's armies might wreak on the poorly-defended provinces of western India. P'rachao Sua had no such scruples. He ordered his army and navy mobilised for the conquest of Borneo. The Sultan, he swore, would beg... (16)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Notes
(1) Note: Due to my wanting to recount the Morion War to a finish rather than splitting it over multiple posts, the chronology has become a trifle confused. This section starts back in 1694, roughly simultaneously with the war.
(2) Missionary failed, September 1699. I had an army garrisoning Sumatra, so it didn't last long.
(3) Colonial Uprising, December 1699. Naturally on an island where I can't raise troops.
(4) I considered re-building the destroyed Weapons Factory, but having no metal provinces (except Magadan) I decided that a Refinery was probably more useful. Yarra (grain) happens to be my richest available province. (I have any number of grain, sheep, fish and spice provinces, but very little suitable for manufactories).
(5) Naval Tech 7, September 1700; Naval Tech 8, April 1701; Naval Tech 9 (and my first naval CRT), August 1701. I kept the treasury slider at 20% and switched the rest into Trade (More than half my income comes from Trade and I wanted my Trade Efficiency over 100%).
(6) Missionary Successful (!), May 1701.
(7) Rush of Merchants, Decmber 1700.
(8) I like having lots of money. This is Refinery No. 4.
(9) +1 Free Trade, January 1703.
(10) Foreign Trade Competition Rises Event, January 1703. I went with 'Deny New Tariff' for +1 Free Trade (I wanted the extra merchant and colonists). Mercantilism is now 0.
(11) Adm Very Poor, Mil Poor, Dip Very Poor. My monarchs are reverting to type.
(12) Ayutthaya now 61 Provinces, 6 Colonies, 16 TPs, Monthly Income 236, Inflation 0%, Tech 18/9/5/5
(13) I had six consecutive colonists fail in Vanin and the natives got angry and ate my TP.
(14) Gift to State, 400 ducats, December 1703
(15) Noble Familes Feud, October 1704. I went with 'Settle'. What's 100 ducats these days?
(16) If he's going to give me the chance to take Sabah in a defensive war, I'm going to take it. Brunei, by the way, has Land 18, Naval 12 and 50,000(!) men under arms. I am definitely not biting off more than I can chew.
Semi-Lobster & Machiavellian - Thanks for the support and good wishes. That war was just a little closer than planned. I don't think I'll be invading Europe any time soon.
jwolf - My original plan was to take Ajeh & Guangdong and then demand Ajeh. That went sideways quickly, but I was eventually able to get up to +20% warscore just by winning battles, after the AI suicided its armies in Cambodia. (My victory was thanks to the siege rearrangement bug - if the AI had been able to combine all its little armies into one big one I'd never have been able to beat it often enough to win). I'm not sure whether the same tactic would work for a province worth much more than Ajeh's 10%, such as a CoT. Possibly if you have a big fleet and could start kicking isolated ships around...
I took Bali in 1570. In the early years it had 6 'regular' revolts (one of which destroyed an army of mine) plus a Heretics event (which took the fort). Converting it required 8 missionaries (and the requisite 7 revolts). No, I do not want to remember it, thanks.
Director - If I did a cost/benefit calculation on my actions, I'd have released Mataram as a vassal long ago (see above). But there's such a thing as pride, and besides I declared my intention to keep the colonialists (well, the other colonialists) out of South-East Asia back in post 1.
As for Brunei, well, it's funny you should mention it....
Another descriptive update! Don't worry about the monarchs. 52 years from now you'll be greeted by a nice surprise!
It will be nice to see Brunei go down. They've had it coming for a long time. It's also very nice when you "turn the corner" and get really good cashflow for all those nice projects like manufactories. What is your army support limit? If it is still fairly low I would be inclined to favor weapons factories over refineries. But it looks like you're in pretty good shape either way. Now you can reap the rewards for your long perseverance earlier. Congratulations, and smash Brunei!
Next target: Indian Land Connection
I tried my hand at playing an Indian minor, and was SLAUGHTERED by the colonising imperial Europeans. So, Yes, I did worry that Portugal would ally itself with another European country and come after you. I am relieved that it happened AFTER you wiped the floor clean with them.
As far as the 000 monarch is concerned don't worry. You could do worse (just how worse, I can't imagine). Now, before anything else, it seems that Ayutthaya is on the brink of Greatness. After diploanexxing Brunei, I would suggest all out attack on India, until your warscore can guarantee 3-5 provinces. I suspect you must out-tech them by now.
Let rip the Jumbos of war!
I tried my hand at playing an Indian minor, and was SLAUGHTERED by the colonising imperial Europeans. So, Yes, I did worry that Portugal would ally itself with another European country and come after you. I am relieved that it happened AFTER you wiped the floor clean with them.
As far as the 000 monarch is concerned don't worry. You could do worse
(just how worse, I can't imagine). Now, before anything else, it seems that Ayutthaya is on the brink of Greatness. After diploanexxing Brunei, I would suggest all out attack on India, until your warscore can guarantee 3-5 provinces. I suspect you must out-tech them by now. Let rip the Jumbos of war!
Chapter 19 - P'rachao Sua (fl1704 - 1708) & T'ai Sra Pumintaraja (fl1709)
The Indian Conflict
The opening of the campaign in India was swift and brutal. Tens of thousands of troops bearing the crescent standard of Delhi poured across the border and all the defenders of Bombay and Goa could do was withdraw to their strongholds and pray. More pragmatically, their superiors set about establishing diplomatic channels so they might again 'persuade' the Sultan's armies to withdraw.
Neither prayer nor bribery proved effective. Less than three months after the start of the war, Bombay fell to overwhelming numbers. Shortly afterwards, there came wholly unexpected bad news from Africa. An expeditionary force from Delhi landed in Keren and claimed control of the area. The natives rose to resist the invasion, battle swept the district and in the chaos Ayutthaya's only African settlement was burned and destroyed.
In India, however, the tide of defeat was beginning to turn. Off the west coast of the subcontinent, the Kingdom's ships won a series of skirmishes against the forces of the Sultan. On land, the castle of Goa held out against everything the armies of Delhi could throw at it. When almost fifty thousand soldiers failed to carry the fortress in August, suffering thousands of casualties from the cannon fire of the defenders, the Sultan began to reconsider his support for his warmongering vassal. By October, he had changed his mind completely and both he and the Khan of the Uzbeks quietly offered peace (1), abandoning Brunei to the wrath of the Elephant. In Ayutthaya, P'rachao Sua hailed the peace as a shining example of his diplomatic genius. The Guild of Indian Trade agreed, and quietly began increasing the defences of Bombay.
Battle for Borneo
The declaration of war had taken the Kingdom rather by surprise, and few troops were immediately available to oppose the army of Brunei. The Sultan took momentary advantage, sending thousands of cavalry to pillage the lands of Sarawak and Kalimantan. These forces made no attempt to besiege the Ayutthayan strongholds and withdrew as quickly as they came (2). Meanwhile, with Ayutthayan forces still assembling, there was brief consternation over the unprotected settlements in southern Borneo. On being told that Selantan and Bandjarmasin were unprotected, P'rachao Sua hastily raised them to provincial status and ordered the newly-appointed governors to fortify the regions (3). It was not until May that the first army (16,000 men) was landed in Kalimantan (4). It was attacked the next month, but the superior numbers and firepower of the Kingdom's infantry saw off the opposing cavalry without difficulty. The army struck north into Sabah, in hot pursuit of their defeated enemies. August saw battle joined before the walls of Sabah; again Ayutthaya had the victory and the remnants of the Sultan's horsemen fled towards the capital.
The apparent collapse of Bruneian (5) resistance now drew the Kingdom's generals into dangerously over-reaching themselves. In October, the victorious First Expeditionary Army followed up their victory by advancing into Brunei itself (6), eager to deal their shattered opponents a fatal blow. No doubt they would have been successful, but their over-confident advance ran into the main army of Brunei, withdrawing from another sweep into Sarawak. The Ayutthayan firing line was overrun by sheer numbers and the survivors of the army reeled back to Sabah. Matters got worse the next month. The cavalry of Brunei turned south and the Second Expeditionary Army, which had just landed twelve thousand strong, was caught by surprise in Bandjarmasin. Inexperienced and outnumbered, the army was cut to pieces (7). Fewer than three thousand survivors made it to the temporary safety of Selantan, and Bandjarmasin fell into enemy hands. From the Elephant Throne, P'rachao Sua decreed the execution of the defeated general and the Governor of Bandjarmasin, sentences that the the Bruneians had in fact pre-empted.
Domestic Affairs
P'rachao Sua in fact had not been completely idle during these months. In the summer of 1705, he ordered the expulsion of Bruneian traders from the markets of the kingdom (8). This caused considerable confusion in the administration, no laws or procedures to do this existing, but the King insisted and the expulsion was officially complete by September. Angered by the delays in shipping troops to Brunei, P'rachao Sua also ordered the construction of additional transport vessels in the yards of Riau, Malacca and Bangkok, but in general the King preferred to leave military matters to his subordinates. The completion of the Great Temple in Kwai (9), with its vaulted roof and seven hundred and twenty stone Buddhas, occupied much more of the King's attention, and he made a gift of an ivory statue of himself to the dedication ceremony.
Back to Borneo
The military situation improved in 1706. Bandjarmasin was retaken without opposition in February, and almost thirty thousand troops were landed on the island in the first six months of the year. Heavily reinforced, the First Expeditionary Army in Sabah beat off repeated attempts by forces from Brunei to drive them out of the province, and, in June, the New Second Expeditionary Army, now over twenty thousand strong, scored a decisive victory over the cavalry of Brunei in Sarawak. By August, the Second had made a successful advance up to the walls of Brunei itself, defeating the Sultan's last intact armies. Further victories followed including a crucial triumph by outnumbered Ayutthayan reinforcements over the remnants of the Bruneian cavalry, which was attempting to regroup in Sarawak (10). By October, as yet more reinforcements landed in Bandjarmasin, the citadels of Brunei and Sabah were both under siege (11) and the armies of the Sultan were a desperate, fugitive mob.
The Great Palace
In recognition of this triumph for his strategic genius, P'rachao Sua decreed the construction of a new palace (12), a mighty structure worth of the Elephant Throne and its occupant. The first stone was laid in November 1706, and progress therafter was rapid, for the King would allow nothing to delay it. Ten thousand workmen laboured on the building, the treasures of three continents were assembled to beautify it and gold by the cartload was expended to ensure that the Great Palace of P'rachao Sua outshone every other edifice in the Kingdom, even the fabled temples of Angkhor. The King publically looked forward to 'splendour exceeding the Ming at their height' and especially to receiving the submission of the Sultan in the new Hall of Audience. Indeed it seemed that everything was going well for King and Kingdom - in the winter of 1706 a permanent settlement was even established in Vanin.
Difficulties and Delays
The good news did not last. The natives in Vanin rose again and seized the settlement, forcing a detachment of militia from Tchumkan to make the long march south to reatake the colony. Battling through desolate terrain and terrible weather, repeatedly assailed by hostile natives, it took them six months to make the journey. Even after settlement of Vanin restarted in October, progress was still very slow and a second native attack followed in May 1708.
In Borneo too, things did not go according to plan, though the last of the Bruneian fugitives were hunted down by May 1707 and formal siege operations begun against Brunei shortly afterwards. Although the soldiers of the Sultan could be vanquished, the slower, subtler enemies of hardship and disease were not so easy to overcome. These now began to take a terrible toll of Ayutthayan troops, especially in the mountains of Sabah. It was hard to keep enough soldiers in the siege-lines to effectively prosecute the sieges, and the walls of Brunei and Sabah showed no signs of crumbling.
To cap a miserable year for P'rachao Sua, late 1707 also saw a general protest by the Buddhist temples against the King, angered by his 'public lack of humility' and by his transfer to the Great Palace of treasure and ornaments intended for the Great Temple in Kwai (13). The King ignored them, of course, but their actions caused considerable public disquiet, especially in rural areas.
And On And On
Early in 1708, a major Ayutthayan army, complete with a siege train of over thirty cannons, was transferred from the mainland to Borneo to speed the siege of Sabah. It appeared, however, that General Malaria might be winning the battle for Brunei. Month after month the reinforcements (mostly Indonesians raised in Java, the Celebes and southern Borneo) went north, month after month the casualty lists lengthened and month after month no progress was made in the sieges (14).
To add insult to injury, just after it finally appeared that some progress had been made in the siege of Brunei, a Bruneian naval squadron emerged from the harbour in September and drove off the Ayutthayan blockading fleet, allowing the citadel to be resupplied (15). In a paroxysm of rage P'rachao Sua ordered the execution of every surviving captain from the defeated fleet. This did not noticably improve its morale, or its battle-readiness.
Fall of an Elephant
P'rachao Sua was fated never to sit in state in his Great Palace, nor to receive the submission of the Sultan of Brunei. In December 1708, during a feast to celebrate the end of an ancient clan feud (16), he over-indulged in rare beef and Perak spirits. Shortly afterwards, he suffered a series of strokes, the third one fatal. He was buried beside his ancestors in the Old Palace, his Great Tomb in the Great Palace not yet being ready. He was succeeded by his brother's eldest son, T'ai Sra; a puffy, overfed youth of little intellectual distinction (17).
News from Abroad
The years of the Brunei War were not totally devoid of developments outside Ayutthaya, though P'rachao Sua in particular paid them little heed. Early in 1705 the English were forced to pay indemnities to the Huron and duly declared war on the Cherokee; a few months later the Russians extracted indemnities from the Ottomans and 1706 saw peace between the Netherlands and the Maya. Early in 1707 the Portuguese made peace with Benin so as to attack Zimbabwe, but the most important news of the year was the nationalist uprisings that struck both Russia and Persia that spring. As Russians battled Ukranians and Persians fought with Afghans, the Netherlands (to keep their hand in) declared war on the Xhosa. By contrast, 1708 was without interest apart from the Russians making peace with Genoa so that Portugal could make war upon it.
T'ai Sra Pumint'araja
The new King took the title of T'ai Sra Pumint'araja. His accession was marked by an irrelevant changing of partners in the European wars (now England against Iroqouis, Netherlands against Creek) and, more importantly, by the elevation of the distant colonies of Taranaki and Whangarei to provincial status, the first settlements on the northern Far Island to be so honoured.
War Situation, January 1709. There's tedious, there's incredibly tedious, then there's invading Brunei...
Closer to home, early 1709 saw the continuation of the war in Brunei, and, in February, yet another defeat for the Kingdom's blockading squadrons off the coast of Borneo. T'ai Sra Pumint'araja, furious, ordered the immediate construction off another fleet to challenge the Sultan's navy, and the spring and summer of 1709 saw a series of naval victories against the Sultan's increasingly ragged fleets (18). Just as significantly, the continued failure of the Ayutthayan artillery to damage the walls of Sabah caused the King to order it transferred south, to add its weight to the more promising siege of Brunei. The blockade was reimposed and, in July the citadel of Brunei finally lowered its colours. The Sultan was carried off prisoner to Ayutthaya, but victory was still hollow while Sabah remained unsubdued.
Sabah, however, showed no signs of crumbling. The autumn of 1709 produced only feuding in Court (19), another native rebellion in Vanin and yet more victories for General Malaria. When, in November, the captive Sultan offered to surrender Sabah to the Kingdom in return for being allowed to return to Brunei, his concession was seized upon to general relief.
So, at the end of 1709, the garrison of Sabah marched out in good order, to take over control of Brunei proper from the Second Expeditionary Army and 'the strongest fortress east of India' became a possession of Ayutthaya (20). The Sultan sailed home, much the poorer but without having to give formal submission. It was victory, but it is doubtful whether P'rachao Sua would have been impressed.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Notes
(1) After having repeatedly refused 2-300 ducats, they offered white peace out of the blue. Who am I to argue?
(2) Since the armies of Brunei were 100% cavalry, the AI wouldn't siege anywhere. Instead it marched its troops in, realised it had no infantry and marched them right back out again before it could take an attrition hit. This behaviour would go from irritating to annoying to downright infuriating before the campaign was over.
(3) Selantan and Bandjarmasin had just not grown to city size when the war started. I ordered the forts for the extra support/recruitment - it was quite safe because the AI was stuck bouncing off the forts in Sarawak and Kalimantan.
(4) Did I mention that there were retreating Bruneian troops in Kalimantan so I got hit for attrition in my own damn province?
(5) I'm not sure if 'Bruneian' is a word but I'm going to use it anyway; 'resistance of Brunei' is too clumsy. Delhi is as bad - anyone know what you call someone from Delhi?
(6) After battle and attrition, I had too few troops to besiege Sabah. I thought I might as well get some use out of them.
(7) Of course, thought the AI wont attack undefended unfortified provinces, put and army in there and...
Tech 18 infantry vs Tech 18 cavalry, in a swamp? Don't even bother, unless you have a big advantage in numbers or morale.
(8) I cancelled by centuries-old Trade Agreement with Brunei (which I'd been wanting to get rid of for some time - the bastards had got a monopoly in Malacca and I couldn't kick them out) and embargoed them. Despite being at war, I still took a stability hit for breaking the TA.
(9) Unexpected Invention, October 1705. Fine Arts Academy in Kwai.
(10) Essential to keep them from recovering morale. I was losing troops faster from attrition than Brunei was from losing battles.
(11) Unfortunately, Brunei is support 15, Sabah is support 6 and both have level-3 forts and ports. These were going to be two long, painful sieges.
(12) Build a Great Palace Event, November 1706. I went with 'Build' for +1 Aristocracy (to 4), +1 Centralisation (to 1) and +25VP at a cost of 500 ducats.
(13) Unhappiness Among the Clergy, October 1707. I went with 'Ignore' for another -1 Stability.
(14) This was getting deeply frustrating. I lost count of the number of reinforcements I shipped in to starve in Brunei and Sabah and did I make any progress in the sieges?
(15) I finally got the fort in Brunei down to 2. Then some Bruneian ships appear, defeat my fleet against odds and the fort goes back up to 3. My serenity was being severely tested around ths point.
(16) End of a Great Feud, August 1708. +1 Stabilty, -50 ducats.
(17) Adm Poor, Mil Poor, Dip Very Poor. A well-balanced set of abilities.
(18) Something I should have done much earlier. I had too few ships to keep a proper blockade on Brunei & Saba, even when they weren't defeated by single routers.
(19) Nobles Feud, August 1709. I chose 'Settle' (-100 ducats).
(20) I was utterly sick of besieging Sabah (which was still at +5), so when Brunei offered me 175 ducats & Sabah, I grabbed it. I couldn't have vassalised the place anyway - it's still a vassal of Delhi.
Semi-Lobster: I'm trying not to worry about the monarchs - and any surprise in that direction couldn't fail to be nice.
jwolf - It will be very nice to see Brunei go down (when it happens). Trust me, when the city fell I was looking for the 'pillage mercilessly' button. My army support, btw, is around 70-80,000, depending on grain trading (I have a lot of grain provinces). I wanted refineries so I could afford an embargo or two without dropping my trade efficiency under 100%.
Keravnos - Indian minors are very tough to play (nowhere to go and all those big neighbours with CBs on you). Vijayanagar can be quite fun...
Sadly, diploannexing Brunei is off the menu while they remain vassals of Delhi, I do not have a Land tech advantage over the Indian states (we'all all around Land 18-19), and the problem with fighting in India is getting an army to India. Plus, since my eventual diploannexation of Tibet & Dai Viet will land me with some Konfucian provinces, I don't want any Hindu ones! Right now, I plan on staying quiet for a bit, doing some research and seeing what turns up. There's still 100 years to get to Guangzhou.
The Indian Conflict
The opening of the campaign in India was swift and brutal. Tens of thousands of troops bearing the crescent standard of Delhi poured across the border and all the defenders of Bombay and Goa could do was withdraw to their strongholds and pray. More pragmatically, their superiors set about establishing diplomatic channels so they might again 'persuade' the Sultan's armies to withdraw.
Neither prayer nor bribery proved effective. Less than three months after the start of the war, Bombay fell to overwhelming numbers. Shortly afterwards, there came wholly unexpected bad news from Africa. An expeditionary force from Delhi landed in Keren and claimed control of the area. The natives rose to resist the invasion, battle swept the district and in the chaos Ayutthaya's only African settlement was burned and destroyed.
In India, however, the tide of defeat was beginning to turn. Off the west coast of the subcontinent, the Kingdom's ships won a series of skirmishes against the forces of the Sultan. On land, the castle of Goa held out against everything the armies of Delhi could throw at it. When almost fifty thousand soldiers failed to carry the fortress in August, suffering thousands of casualties from the cannon fire of the defenders, the Sultan began to reconsider his support for his warmongering vassal. By October, he had changed his mind completely and both he and the Khan of the Uzbeks quietly offered peace (1), abandoning Brunei to the wrath of the Elephant. In Ayutthaya, P'rachao Sua hailed the peace as a shining example of his diplomatic genius. The Guild of Indian Trade agreed, and quietly began increasing the defences of Bombay.
Battle for Borneo
The declaration of war had taken the Kingdom rather by surprise, and few troops were immediately available to oppose the army of Brunei. The Sultan took momentary advantage, sending thousands of cavalry to pillage the lands of Sarawak and Kalimantan. These forces made no attempt to besiege the Ayutthayan strongholds and withdrew as quickly as they came (2). Meanwhile, with Ayutthayan forces still assembling, there was brief consternation over the unprotected settlements in southern Borneo. On being told that Selantan and Bandjarmasin were unprotected, P'rachao Sua hastily raised them to provincial status and ordered the newly-appointed governors to fortify the regions (3). It was not until May that the first army (16,000 men) was landed in Kalimantan (4). It was attacked the next month, but the superior numbers and firepower of the Kingdom's infantry saw off the opposing cavalry without difficulty. The army struck north into Sabah, in hot pursuit of their defeated enemies. August saw battle joined before the walls of Sabah; again Ayutthaya had the victory and the remnants of the Sultan's horsemen fled towards the capital.
The apparent collapse of Bruneian (5) resistance now drew the Kingdom's generals into dangerously over-reaching themselves. In October, the victorious First Expeditionary Army followed up their victory by advancing into Brunei itself (6), eager to deal their shattered opponents a fatal blow. No doubt they would have been successful, but their over-confident advance ran into the main army of Brunei, withdrawing from another sweep into Sarawak. The Ayutthayan firing line was overrun by sheer numbers and the survivors of the army reeled back to Sabah. Matters got worse the next month. The cavalry of Brunei turned south and the Second Expeditionary Army, which had just landed twelve thousand strong, was caught by surprise in Bandjarmasin. Inexperienced and outnumbered, the army was cut to pieces (7). Fewer than three thousand survivors made it to the temporary safety of Selantan, and Bandjarmasin fell into enemy hands. From the Elephant Throne, P'rachao Sua decreed the execution of the defeated general and the Governor of Bandjarmasin, sentences that the the Bruneians had in fact pre-empted.
Domestic Affairs
P'rachao Sua in fact had not been completely idle during these months. In the summer of 1705, he ordered the expulsion of Bruneian traders from the markets of the kingdom (8). This caused considerable confusion in the administration, no laws or procedures to do this existing, but the King insisted and the expulsion was officially complete by September. Angered by the delays in shipping troops to Brunei, P'rachao Sua also ordered the construction of additional transport vessels in the yards of Riau, Malacca and Bangkok, but in general the King preferred to leave military matters to his subordinates. The completion of the Great Temple in Kwai (9), with its vaulted roof and seven hundred and twenty stone Buddhas, occupied much more of the King's attention, and he made a gift of an ivory statue of himself to the dedication ceremony.
Back to Borneo
The military situation improved in 1706. Bandjarmasin was retaken without opposition in February, and almost thirty thousand troops were landed on the island in the first six months of the year. Heavily reinforced, the First Expeditionary Army in Sabah beat off repeated attempts by forces from Brunei to drive them out of the province, and, in June, the New Second Expeditionary Army, now over twenty thousand strong, scored a decisive victory over the cavalry of Brunei in Sarawak. By August, the Second had made a successful advance up to the walls of Brunei itself, defeating the Sultan's last intact armies. Further victories followed including a crucial triumph by outnumbered Ayutthayan reinforcements over the remnants of the Bruneian cavalry, which was attempting to regroup in Sarawak (10). By October, as yet more reinforcements landed in Bandjarmasin, the citadels of Brunei and Sabah were both under siege (11) and the armies of the Sultan were a desperate, fugitive mob.
The Great Palace
In recognition of this triumph for his strategic genius, P'rachao Sua decreed the construction of a new palace (12), a mighty structure worth of the Elephant Throne and its occupant. The first stone was laid in November 1706, and progress therafter was rapid, for the King would allow nothing to delay it. Ten thousand workmen laboured on the building, the treasures of three continents were assembled to beautify it and gold by the cartload was expended to ensure that the Great Palace of P'rachao Sua outshone every other edifice in the Kingdom, even the fabled temples of Angkhor. The King publically looked forward to 'splendour exceeding the Ming at their height' and especially to receiving the submission of the Sultan in the new Hall of Audience. Indeed it seemed that everything was going well for King and Kingdom - in the winter of 1706 a permanent settlement was even established in Vanin.
Difficulties and Delays
The good news did not last. The natives in Vanin rose again and seized the settlement, forcing a detachment of militia from Tchumkan to make the long march south to reatake the colony. Battling through desolate terrain and terrible weather, repeatedly assailed by hostile natives, it took them six months to make the journey. Even after settlement of Vanin restarted in October, progress was still very slow and a second native attack followed in May 1708.
In Borneo too, things did not go according to plan, though the last of the Bruneian fugitives were hunted down by May 1707 and formal siege operations begun against Brunei shortly afterwards. Although the soldiers of the Sultan could be vanquished, the slower, subtler enemies of hardship and disease were not so easy to overcome. These now began to take a terrible toll of Ayutthayan troops, especially in the mountains of Sabah. It was hard to keep enough soldiers in the siege-lines to effectively prosecute the sieges, and the walls of Brunei and Sabah showed no signs of crumbling.
To cap a miserable year for P'rachao Sua, late 1707 also saw a general protest by the Buddhist temples against the King, angered by his 'public lack of humility' and by his transfer to the Great Palace of treasure and ornaments intended for the Great Temple in Kwai (13). The King ignored them, of course, but their actions caused considerable public disquiet, especially in rural areas.
And On And On
Early in 1708, a major Ayutthayan army, complete with a siege train of over thirty cannons, was transferred from the mainland to Borneo to speed the siege of Sabah. It appeared, however, that General Malaria might be winning the battle for Brunei. Month after month the reinforcements (mostly Indonesians raised in Java, the Celebes and southern Borneo) went north, month after month the casualty lists lengthened and month after month no progress was made in the sieges (14).
To add insult to injury, just after it finally appeared that some progress had been made in the siege of Brunei, a Bruneian naval squadron emerged from the harbour in September and drove off the Ayutthayan blockading fleet, allowing the citadel to be resupplied (15). In a paroxysm of rage P'rachao Sua ordered the execution of every surviving captain from the defeated fleet. This did not noticably improve its morale, or its battle-readiness.
Fall of an Elephant
P'rachao Sua was fated never to sit in state in his Great Palace, nor to receive the submission of the Sultan of Brunei. In December 1708, during a feast to celebrate the end of an ancient clan feud (16), he over-indulged in rare beef and Perak spirits. Shortly afterwards, he suffered a series of strokes, the third one fatal. He was buried beside his ancestors in the Old Palace, his Great Tomb in the Great Palace not yet being ready. He was succeeded by his brother's eldest son, T'ai Sra; a puffy, overfed youth of little intellectual distinction (17).
News from Abroad
The years of the Brunei War were not totally devoid of developments outside Ayutthaya, though P'rachao Sua in particular paid them little heed. Early in 1705 the English were forced to pay indemnities to the Huron and duly declared war on the Cherokee; a few months later the Russians extracted indemnities from the Ottomans and 1706 saw peace between the Netherlands and the Maya. Early in 1707 the Portuguese made peace with Benin so as to attack Zimbabwe, but the most important news of the year was the nationalist uprisings that struck both Russia and Persia that spring. As Russians battled Ukranians and Persians fought with Afghans, the Netherlands (to keep their hand in) declared war on the Xhosa. By contrast, 1708 was without interest apart from the Russians making peace with Genoa so that Portugal could make war upon it.
T'ai Sra Pumint'araja
The new King took the title of T'ai Sra Pumint'araja. His accession was marked by an irrelevant changing of partners in the European wars (now England against Iroqouis, Netherlands against Creek) and, more importantly, by the elevation of the distant colonies of Taranaki and Whangarei to provincial status, the first settlements on the northern Far Island to be so honoured.
War Situation, January 1709. There's tedious, there's incredibly tedious, then there's invading Brunei...
Closer to home, early 1709 saw the continuation of the war in Brunei, and, in February, yet another defeat for the Kingdom's blockading squadrons off the coast of Borneo. T'ai Sra Pumint'araja, furious, ordered the immediate construction off another fleet to challenge the Sultan's navy, and the spring and summer of 1709 saw a series of naval victories against the Sultan's increasingly ragged fleets (18). Just as significantly, the continued failure of the Ayutthayan artillery to damage the walls of Sabah caused the King to order it transferred south, to add its weight to the more promising siege of Brunei. The blockade was reimposed and, in July the citadel of Brunei finally lowered its colours. The Sultan was carried off prisoner to Ayutthaya, but victory was still hollow while Sabah remained unsubdued.
Sabah, however, showed no signs of crumbling. The autumn of 1709 produced only feuding in Court (19), another native rebellion in Vanin and yet more victories for General Malaria. When, in November, the captive Sultan offered to surrender Sabah to the Kingdom in return for being allowed to return to Brunei, his concession was seized upon to general relief.
So, at the end of 1709, the garrison of Sabah marched out in good order, to take over control of Brunei proper from the Second Expeditionary Army and 'the strongest fortress east of India' became a possession of Ayutthaya (20). The Sultan sailed home, much the poorer but without having to give formal submission. It was victory, but it is doubtful whether P'rachao Sua would have been impressed.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Notes
(1) After having repeatedly refused 2-300 ducats, they offered white peace out of the blue. Who am I to argue?
(2) Since the armies of Brunei were 100% cavalry, the AI wouldn't siege anywhere. Instead it marched its troops in, realised it had no infantry and marched them right back out again before it could take an attrition hit. This behaviour would go from irritating to annoying to downright infuriating before the campaign was over.
(3) Selantan and Bandjarmasin had just not grown to city size when the war started. I ordered the forts for the extra support/recruitment - it was quite safe because the AI was stuck bouncing off the forts in Sarawak and Kalimantan.
(4) Did I mention that there were retreating Bruneian troops in Kalimantan so I got hit for attrition in my own damn province?
(5) I'm not sure if 'Bruneian' is a word but I'm going to use it anyway; 'resistance of Brunei' is too clumsy. Delhi is as bad - anyone know what you call someone from Delhi?
(6) After battle and attrition, I had too few troops to besiege Sabah. I thought I might as well get some use out of them.
(7) Of course, thought the AI wont attack undefended unfortified provinces, put and army in there and...
Tech 18 infantry vs Tech 18 cavalry, in a swamp? Don't even bother, unless you have a big advantage in numbers or morale.
(8) I cancelled by centuries-old Trade Agreement with Brunei (which I'd been wanting to get rid of for some time - the bastards had got a monopoly in Malacca and I couldn't kick them out) and embargoed them. Despite being at war, I still took a stability hit for breaking the TA.
(9) Unexpected Invention, October 1705. Fine Arts Academy in Kwai.
(10) Essential to keep them from recovering morale. I was losing troops faster from attrition than Brunei was from losing battles.
(11) Unfortunately, Brunei is support 15, Sabah is support 6 and both have level-3 forts and ports. These were going to be two long, painful sieges.
(12) Build a Great Palace Event, November 1706. I went with 'Build' for +1 Aristocracy (to 4), +1 Centralisation (to 1) and +25VP at a cost of 500 ducats.
(13) Unhappiness Among the Clergy, October 1707. I went with 'Ignore' for another -1 Stability.
(14) This was getting deeply frustrating. I lost count of the number of reinforcements I shipped in to starve in Brunei and Sabah and did I make any progress in the sieges?
(15) I finally got the fort in Brunei down to 2. Then some Bruneian ships appear, defeat my fleet against odds and the fort goes back up to 3. My serenity was being severely tested around ths point.
(16) End of a Great Feud, August 1708. +1 Stabilty, -50 ducats.
(17) Adm Poor, Mil Poor, Dip Very Poor. A well-balanced set of abilities.
(18) Something I should have done much earlier. I had too few ships to keep a proper blockade on Brunei & Saba, even when they weren't defeated by single routers.
(19) Nobles Feud, August 1709. I chose 'Settle' (-100 ducats).
(20) I was utterly sick of besieging Sabah (which was still at +5), so when Brunei offered me 175 ducats & Sabah, I grabbed it. I couldn't have vassalised the place anyway - it's still a vassal of Delhi.
Semi-Lobster: I'm trying not to worry about the monarchs - and any surprise in that direction couldn't fail to be nice.
jwolf - It will be very nice to see Brunei go down (when it happens). Trust me, when the city fell I was looking for the 'pillage mercilessly' button. My army support, btw, is around 70-80,000, depending on grain trading (I have a lot of grain provinces). I wanted refineries so I could afford an embargo or two without dropping my trade efficiency under 100%.
Keravnos - Indian minors are very tough to play (nowhere to go and all those big neighbours with CBs on you). Vijayanagar can be quite fun...
Sadly, diploannexing Brunei is off the menu while they remain vassals of Delhi, I do not have a Land tech advantage over the Indian states (we'all all around Land 18-19), and the problem with fighting in India is getting an army to India. Plus, since my eventual diploannexation of Tibet & Dai Viet will land me with some Konfucian provinces, I don't want any Hindu ones! Right now, I plan on staying quiet for a bit, doing some research and seeing what turns up. There's still 100 years to get to Guangzhou.
I see your taking T'ai Sra Pumintaraja with good humour. Balanced indeed! The attrition can be very unfriendly in EUII, but so can you're neighbours! I find it hilarious how England keeps getting it's rear-end kicked in by the native Americans!
Yep, it is good to know that Maya, Creek and other Americans beat the crap out of European Imperialists.
Better luck next game... Maybe England will have to wait for Vicky.
So, waiting is the better part of valor. Can't disagree here.
There is nothing better than a better tech smaller army beating the crap of a larger lower tech one. Problem is that most of the times you are the losing army...
Has China stabilised any? They might come back with a vengeance...
Better luck next game... Maybe England will have to wait for Vicky.
So, waiting is the better part of valor. Can't disagree here.
There is nothing better than a better tech smaller army beating the crap of a larger lower tech one. Problem is that most of the times you are the losing army...
Has China stabilised any? They might come back with a vengeance...
Last edited:
Chapter 20 - T'ai Sra Pumintaraja (1709 - fl 1720)
Peace and Reconstruction
After the exertions and expenses of the Brunei War, the peace that followed was a good time for the people of Ayutthaya. Trade rapidly recovered and indeed soon exceeded its previous peak (1). Harvests were good, the political factions were quiet and T'ai Sra Pumint'araja chose to expend whatever energy he could spare from the theatre and the dining-table on improving the domestic economy and administration, rather than seeking glory abroad after the fashion of his uncle. Indeed such was his detached attitude to affairs of state that many took it for apathy. When the King of Tibet accused him of 'leading the Buddha's servants to idleness and dissipation' he chose to publically ignore the insult and privately placate the disgruntled monarch with a special gift of finely-illuminated Buddhist texts (2). The nobles grumbled, the Guilds nervously awaited the ascension of the next strongman and many government officials saw an opportunity to enrich themselves at the Kingdom's expense. The King was forced to rouse himself to a series of exemplary punishments in order to demonstrate that these last, at least, were mistaken (3).
Beyond the shores of Old Ayutthaya, the various Guilds and colonial authorities took it upon themselves to expand and defend their interests. After immense toil, loss, and sacrifice, the settlement and fort of Vanin (it was officially a provincial capital, but it hardly merited that description), was finally completed in 1711. The following year, the Guild of Indonesian Trade, eager to wring every last copper from the lands under its jurisdiction, pushed its trading interests even into the unsettled, unpromising and downright uncivilised terrritories of Rabaul and Kalepam (4). Little profit accrued from these efforts, but it was generally felt that a point had been proved. The Indian Guild, less vainglorious or perhaps just less optimistic, contented itself with fortifying its colonial centres in Cochin and Pondicherry.
The Bear at Bay
In the early years of T'ai Sra Pumint'araja's reign, news from abroad was dominated by events in Russia, where domestic strife and foreign invasion were pulling that once-mighty nation to the brink of disintegration. In 1709, it was forced to surrender Alga and Georgia to the might of Courland; the following year Mecklenburg tore away Astrakhan and the Crimea. In face of these disasters, the Russian 'Czar' set about a major reform of government, with the intention of centralising all power in his own hands and sweeping away all domestic opposition to his rule (5). This was the precise opposite of the plural system that had brought success to Ayutthaya, and many commentators, observing the ruin of China, doubted that so vast and varied a terrain could be truly governed from a single palace. However, the reform seemed to work for the Russians - peace was made with Saxony in 1711, with the Ukrainians in 1713 and finally Bohemia (at a high price) in 1714. By the end of the year, the Bear was sufficiently revived to embark on war with the Khazaks. Perhaps the crude and turbulent peoples of Europe truly did require 'the smack of firm government'.
The Golden Years
In Old Ayutthaya, the period following 1712 became known (in retrospect) as the Golden Time. 1712 was noted mainly for an outbreak of plague which tragically ravaged the Burmese uplands (6), but in 1713 everything came right. Some of the new prosperity derived from the King's decision to spend heavily on the reconstruction of eastern provinces, which were still suffering from the after-effects of the Morion War (7), but the economic upturn was nation-wide. The harvest was exceptionally abundant, the markets were full and the issue of new paper currency (to replace that still carrying the stamp of P'rachao Sua) was conducted with speed, efficiency, and a larger-than-usual roundup of forgers, coiners, unlicensed moneylenders and corrupt officials (8). The one blot on the year's record was the ruler of Champa once again renouncing his vassalage to the Elephant Throne. Despite the mutterings of the old-timers, T'ai Sra Pumint'araja once again chose to let sleeping dogs lie. The mass of the populace and the bulk of the Court, not wanting another drawn-out foreign war, supported the King's pacific policy. Rather than enforce his rule on unwilling - and unprofitable - subordinates, T'ai Sra Pumint'araja chose to draw his friends closer, sending the first of a series of elaborate gifts to Annam, and even marrying one of his cousins to the Northern Ming emperor.
The King's policy continued in this vein through the years that followed. In 1714 a new census revealed an unexpected population increase in Yunnan, ascribed variously to increased efficiency or an influx of migrants from Qing-controlled China (9). In 1715 the viceroy of New Ayutthaya declared the incorporation of a new province (Manunda) and the construction of a second Great Factory in Woolongong province (10) to match the one in Yarra. A special trading company was formed to carry the Factory's exports back to the mainland (11). (Trade Companies - associations of provincial merchants of less than Guild standing - were becoming increasingly important in Ayutthaya's economy following the reforms of P'ra P'etraja). Meanwhile, the King continued to woo his allies, agreeing mutual access for Ayutthayan and Cambodia merchants in 1716 (12).
Crises in Far-Off Lands
Although these were years of peace and stability for Ayutthaya, the same was not true for other nations. In 1712 the stuggling Mughal Empire was stuck by a succession crisis, which rapidly degenerated into open civil war (13). Around the same time the distant nation of the Creek was annexed by the Netherlands, and the following year England and Sweden made war upon the pariah of Europe, Genoa, and its allies (Venice and the Knights). A few years later in 1717 - shortly after the Mughals recovered Kabul from the Afghans - it was Persia's turn to be struck by political fragmentation and factional conspiracy rapidly led to all-out clan war (14). Other events were of lesser significance - in 1716 the Portuguese switched their attention from Zimbabwe to Kongo; in 1718 the Netherlands made peace on the Xhosa and war on the Aztecs and in 1719 the Russian 'Czar' continued his 'modernisation' program by taking personal control of the local temples (15), in the conventional European manner.
The Reforms of T'ai Sra Pumint'araja
The Golden Years came to an unexpected and bloody end in 1717 with an armed uprising in Kwai province (16), apparently originating from popular hostility to a newly-appointed Governor. The Royal Army swiftly crushed the revolt, but its political consequences were significant. The King agrued convincingly that the rebellion had only attracted popular sympathy because of a general feeling of powerlessness in the face of arbitrary authority. Ayutthayan law and bureaucracy, which had been growing piecemeal since the days of Boromo Trailokanat, had become famously complex, but the situation in Kwai province was notorious even in Ayutthaya. Authority was so divided between royal officials, the provincial nobility, the Guilds and the free cities that not even the Governor's own advisors could say with confidence which of the province's four legal codes should apply in any given situation. Merchants and artisans, even the richer peasants, rarely knew which official to pay their taxes to or where to go for justice. Not surprisingly, the wealthy or well-connected could always find a ruling or offical to support their case, the remainder watched and fumed. To prevent a recurrance of the Kwai rebellions, T'ai Sra Pumint'araja had his officials draw up a new Basic Law, detailing the ranks and responsibilities of the various levels of officials as well as the rights and duties of the different social classes. This Basic Law was initially introduced in the Home Provinces, Malaya, Laos and Sarakham, where Ayutthaya rule was oldest and the encrustation of overlapping laws most dense (17).
To general surprise among the administrative classes, the Basic Law was an immediate success and the general administration of the country improved markedly. The new prosperity spread throughout the Kingdom (18), reaching even distant Assam, where a new Weavers' Company was founded to advance the cotton trade (19). Building on the success of the Basic Law, T'ai Sra Pumint'araja followed it with a new rural administration law early in 1720, affirming the rights of even the peasant classes to their land and homes and to impartial justice under the Basic Law (20). The nobility and the Guilds, who had broadly supported the Basic Law as a necessary reform, were considerably less enthusiastic about this new development, but the general prosperity of the Kingdom muted their opposition.
White Tifni and the North
Following the establishment of Vanin in 1711, stagnation came to the Ayutthayan settlements on the Ice Coast. The Vanin affair had not encouraged settlers to strike north (rather than to New Ayutthaya or India), and the end of expansion meant declining prospects of profit for the Guild of Northern Trade. Apart from the gold of Enkan - jealously guarded by its royal administrators - all the money and lives poured into the Ice Coast had yielded only a trickle of low-value goods - fish, timber and furs traded from the local savages. Yet the Guild never gave up on its colonial operations. In 1716-18 it tried to further expand the coastal settlements, with a couple of not-very-successful projects in Djugdjur and Bogorodsk, but the dream had always been of finding a man brave and skilled enough to carry the banner of the Gulid inland, and lead its traders and prospectors to the rumoured riches of the unexplored interior. In 1718, they found their man (21).
He was the son of a native trapper in Tchumkan, named Tifni after the Ayutthayan hero. To generations of schoolboys, he would be 'White Tifni' or 'The Snow Fox'. He set out with the spring thaw, leading a column from the Guild and the Tchumkan militia, all mounted on hardy ponies. His orders were simply to map the upper reaches of the Black Bear River, which flowed out of the forest just north of the Tchumkan colony, and possibly make contact with natives from the interior. Instead he lead his whole column over the hills into Nagorje, where they were ambushed by hostiles and forced to retreat. Unabashed, he set out again at midsummer, exploring from Baladok through Stanovoe and Djagdi all the way to Chilka, without losing a man.
This was only the beginning. Against orders, he wintered in the interior, supplied by the natives and joined by a group of Guild traders sent out from Tchumkan (22). With the coming of spring, he was off again, westward, into the seemingly endless wilderness of Siberia. Every day brought them to new forests, new mountains and rivers, new native tribes who had never even heard of civilisation. Still they pressed on, blazing the trails for those who were to follow them. In a single season, Tifni lead them through the lands of the Kalar and Kalakan, over the mighty Selenga River, all the way to Irkutsk on chilly Lake Baikal. Where he went, the traders, trappers and prospectors soon followed. Especially the prospectors, after he sent word back from Buriat in late summer, the word his backers had been praying for ever since he left. The word was gold.
Ayutthaya and China in 1720
Only in foreign affairs did T'ai Sra Pumint'araja's ambitions come to naught. Despite extensive wooing, the King of Annam refused to submit to Ayutthayan overlordship in 1718. Relations remained excellent, however, and in 1720, as the Kingdom celebrated ten years of peace, T'ai Sra Pumint'araja could consider the first part of his reign a success.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Notes
(1) Trade 6 reached, March 1710. Trade Efficiency was now 101%. My next objective was Infrastructure 6.
(2) Diplomatic Insult from Tibet, June 1710. I ignored it and send a Personal Gift to restore relations.
(3) Corruption Event, May 1711. I went with 'Eradicate' (-1 Stability).
(4) With Trade Efficiency 100%, I have a 95% chance to set up a Trade Post anywhere.
(5) Russia had 'Governmental Reforms and Absolutism', January 1711. I was not scared of Russia at this point.
(6) Plague, April 1712. -1,500 population in Bago.
(7) Rebuilt the Weapons Manufactory in Laos, January 1713.
(8) Exceptional Year, July 1713. +100 ducats, inflation to zero.
(9) Or even to Regulation of the Medical Profession. (+1,500 population in Yunnan, June 1714).
(10) Refinery in Woolongong, March 1715.
(11) Monopoly Company Formed, December 1715.
(12) I was trying to compete all non-allied merchants out of Malacca, and I didn't want to waste time and relations hitting the Cambodians.
(13) Mughals chose 'Let them fight it out' in 'Succession Crisis'; March 1712
(14) Political Fragmentation followed six months later by Political Turmoil.
(15) Russia Abolishes the Patriarchate, October 1719.
(16) Unproked Revolt, January 1717
(17) Chief Judges in Bangkok, Kwai, Phuket, Perak, Malacca, Johor, Laos & Sarakham.
(18) Infrastructure 6 reached, August 1718. Next Target was Naval 11 (for a shipyard & more colonists).
(19) Goods Manufactory in Assam (the only cloth province in the Kingdom), January 1719
(20) +1 Free Subjects (now Serfdom 2), February 1720.
(21) Colonial Dynamism, December 1717. Conquistador in Tchumkan & +3 colonists. Siberia, here I come!
(22) I was spamming traders into Siberia as fast as I could go. TPs also make good places for conquistadors to overwinter in.
Semi-Lobster - If you think England's doing badly take a look at Russia - Meckenburg in Astrakhan is a new one on me!
Keravnos - The Creek have gone, sadly. But England's still going nowhere against the Iroqouis.
China's still a mess (see map). 'China' & Korea are still at war - the Chinese capital is occupied and they've got no land connection so they can't get it back. Manchu is just sitting there.
Peace and Reconstruction
After the exertions and expenses of the Brunei War, the peace that followed was a good time for the people of Ayutthaya. Trade rapidly recovered and indeed soon exceeded its previous peak (1). Harvests were good, the political factions were quiet and T'ai Sra Pumint'araja chose to expend whatever energy he could spare from the theatre and the dining-table on improving the domestic economy and administration, rather than seeking glory abroad after the fashion of his uncle. Indeed such was his detached attitude to affairs of state that many took it for apathy. When the King of Tibet accused him of 'leading the Buddha's servants to idleness and dissipation' he chose to publically ignore the insult and privately placate the disgruntled monarch with a special gift of finely-illuminated Buddhist texts (2). The nobles grumbled, the Guilds nervously awaited the ascension of the next strongman and many government officials saw an opportunity to enrich themselves at the Kingdom's expense. The King was forced to rouse himself to a series of exemplary punishments in order to demonstrate that these last, at least, were mistaken (3).
Beyond the shores of Old Ayutthaya, the various Guilds and colonial authorities took it upon themselves to expand and defend their interests. After immense toil, loss, and sacrifice, the settlement and fort of Vanin (it was officially a provincial capital, but it hardly merited that description), was finally completed in 1711. The following year, the Guild of Indonesian Trade, eager to wring every last copper from the lands under its jurisdiction, pushed its trading interests even into the unsettled, unpromising and downright uncivilised terrritories of Rabaul and Kalepam (4). Little profit accrued from these efforts, but it was generally felt that a point had been proved. The Indian Guild, less vainglorious or perhaps just less optimistic, contented itself with fortifying its colonial centres in Cochin and Pondicherry.
The Bear at Bay
In the early years of T'ai Sra Pumint'araja's reign, news from abroad was dominated by events in Russia, where domestic strife and foreign invasion were pulling that once-mighty nation to the brink of disintegration. In 1709, it was forced to surrender Alga and Georgia to the might of Courland; the following year Mecklenburg tore away Astrakhan and the Crimea. In face of these disasters, the Russian 'Czar' set about a major reform of government, with the intention of centralising all power in his own hands and sweeping away all domestic opposition to his rule (5). This was the precise opposite of the plural system that had brought success to Ayutthaya, and many commentators, observing the ruin of China, doubted that so vast and varied a terrain could be truly governed from a single palace. However, the reform seemed to work for the Russians - peace was made with Saxony in 1711, with the Ukrainians in 1713 and finally Bohemia (at a high price) in 1714. By the end of the year, the Bear was sufficiently revived to embark on war with the Khazaks. Perhaps the crude and turbulent peoples of Europe truly did require 'the smack of firm government'.
The Golden Years
In Old Ayutthaya, the period following 1712 became known (in retrospect) as the Golden Time. 1712 was noted mainly for an outbreak of plague which tragically ravaged the Burmese uplands (6), but in 1713 everything came right. Some of the new prosperity derived from the King's decision to spend heavily on the reconstruction of eastern provinces, which were still suffering from the after-effects of the Morion War (7), but the economic upturn was nation-wide. The harvest was exceptionally abundant, the markets were full and the issue of new paper currency (to replace that still carrying the stamp of P'rachao Sua) was conducted with speed, efficiency, and a larger-than-usual roundup of forgers, coiners, unlicensed moneylenders and corrupt officials (8). The one blot on the year's record was the ruler of Champa once again renouncing his vassalage to the Elephant Throne. Despite the mutterings of the old-timers, T'ai Sra Pumint'araja once again chose to let sleeping dogs lie. The mass of the populace and the bulk of the Court, not wanting another drawn-out foreign war, supported the King's pacific policy. Rather than enforce his rule on unwilling - and unprofitable - subordinates, T'ai Sra Pumint'araja chose to draw his friends closer, sending the first of a series of elaborate gifts to Annam, and even marrying one of his cousins to the Northern Ming emperor.
The King's policy continued in this vein through the years that followed. In 1714 a new census revealed an unexpected population increase in Yunnan, ascribed variously to increased efficiency or an influx of migrants from Qing-controlled China (9). In 1715 the viceroy of New Ayutthaya declared the incorporation of a new province (Manunda) and the construction of a second Great Factory in Woolongong province (10) to match the one in Yarra. A special trading company was formed to carry the Factory's exports back to the mainland (11). (Trade Companies - associations of provincial merchants of less than Guild standing - were becoming increasingly important in Ayutthaya's economy following the reforms of P'ra P'etraja). Meanwhile, the King continued to woo his allies, agreeing mutual access for Ayutthayan and Cambodia merchants in 1716 (12).
Crises in Far-Off Lands
Although these were years of peace and stability for Ayutthaya, the same was not true for other nations. In 1712 the stuggling Mughal Empire was stuck by a succession crisis, which rapidly degenerated into open civil war (13). Around the same time the distant nation of the Creek was annexed by the Netherlands, and the following year England and Sweden made war upon the pariah of Europe, Genoa, and its allies (Venice and the Knights). A few years later in 1717 - shortly after the Mughals recovered Kabul from the Afghans - it was Persia's turn to be struck by political fragmentation and factional conspiracy rapidly led to all-out clan war (14). Other events were of lesser significance - in 1716 the Portuguese switched their attention from Zimbabwe to Kongo; in 1718 the Netherlands made peace on the Xhosa and war on the Aztecs and in 1719 the Russian 'Czar' continued his 'modernisation' program by taking personal control of the local temples (15), in the conventional European manner.
The Reforms of T'ai Sra Pumint'araja
The Golden Years came to an unexpected and bloody end in 1717 with an armed uprising in Kwai province (16), apparently originating from popular hostility to a newly-appointed Governor. The Royal Army swiftly crushed the revolt, but its political consequences were significant. The King agrued convincingly that the rebellion had only attracted popular sympathy because of a general feeling of powerlessness in the face of arbitrary authority. Ayutthayan law and bureaucracy, which had been growing piecemeal since the days of Boromo Trailokanat, had become famously complex, but the situation in Kwai province was notorious even in Ayutthaya. Authority was so divided between royal officials, the provincial nobility, the Guilds and the free cities that not even the Governor's own advisors could say with confidence which of the province's four legal codes should apply in any given situation. Merchants and artisans, even the richer peasants, rarely knew which official to pay their taxes to or where to go for justice. Not surprisingly, the wealthy or well-connected could always find a ruling or offical to support their case, the remainder watched and fumed. To prevent a recurrance of the Kwai rebellions, T'ai Sra Pumint'araja had his officials draw up a new Basic Law, detailing the ranks and responsibilities of the various levels of officials as well as the rights and duties of the different social classes. This Basic Law was initially introduced in the Home Provinces, Malaya, Laos and Sarakham, where Ayutthaya rule was oldest and the encrustation of overlapping laws most dense (17).
To general surprise among the administrative classes, the Basic Law was an immediate success and the general administration of the country improved markedly. The new prosperity spread throughout the Kingdom (18), reaching even distant Assam, where a new Weavers' Company was founded to advance the cotton trade (19). Building on the success of the Basic Law, T'ai Sra Pumint'araja followed it with a new rural administration law early in 1720, affirming the rights of even the peasant classes to their land and homes and to impartial justice under the Basic Law (20). The nobility and the Guilds, who had broadly supported the Basic Law as a necessary reform, were considerably less enthusiastic about this new development, but the general prosperity of the Kingdom muted their opposition.
White Tifni and the North
Following the establishment of Vanin in 1711, stagnation came to the Ayutthayan settlements on the Ice Coast. The Vanin affair had not encouraged settlers to strike north (rather than to New Ayutthaya or India), and the end of expansion meant declining prospects of profit for the Guild of Northern Trade. Apart from the gold of Enkan - jealously guarded by its royal administrators - all the money and lives poured into the Ice Coast had yielded only a trickle of low-value goods - fish, timber and furs traded from the local savages. Yet the Guild never gave up on its colonial operations. In 1716-18 it tried to further expand the coastal settlements, with a couple of not-very-successful projects in Djugdjur and Bogorodsk, but the dream had always been of finding a man brave and skilled enough to carry the banner of the Gulid inland, and lead its traders and prospectors to the rumoured riches of the unexplored interior. In 1718, they found their man (21).
He was the son of a native trapper in Tchumkan, named Tifni after the Ayutthayan hero. To generations of schoolboys, he would be 'White Tifni' or 'The Snow Fox'. He set out with the spring thaw, leading a column from the Guild and the Tchumkan militia, all mounted on hardy ponies. His orders were simply to map the upper reaches of the Black Bear River, which flowed out of the forest just north of the Tchumkan colony, and possibly make contact with natives from the interior. Instead he lead his whole column over the hills into Nagorje, where they were ambushed by hostiles and forced to retreat. Unabashed, he set out again at midsummer, exploring from Baladok through Stanovoe and Djagdi all the way to Chilka, without losing a man.
This was only the beginning. Against orders, he wintered in the interior, supplied by the natives and joined by a group of Guild traders sent out from Tchumkan (22). With the coming of spring, he was off again, westward, into the seemingly endless wilderness of Siberia. Every day brought them to new forests, new mountains and rivers, new native tribes who had never even heard of civilisation. Still they pressed on, blazing the trails for those who were to follow them. In a single season, Tifni lead them through the lands of the Kalar and Kalakan, over the mighty Selenga River, all the way to Irkutsk on chilly Lake Baikal. Where he went, the traders, trappers and prospectors soon followed. Especially the prospectors, after he sent word back from Buriat in late summer, the word his backers had been praying for ever since he left. The word was gold.
Ayutthaya and China in 1720
Only in foreign affairs did T'ai Sra Pumint'araja's ambitions come to naught. Despite extensive wooing, the King of Annam refused to submit to Ayutthayan overlordship in 1718. Relations remained excellent, however, and in 1720, as the Kingdom celebrated ten years of peace, T'ai Sra Pumint'araja could consider the first part of his reign a success.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Notes
(1) Trade 6 reached, March 1710. Trade Efficiency was now 101%. My next objective was Infrastructure 6.
(2) Diplomatic Insult from Tibet, June 1710. I ignored it and send a Personal Gift to restore relations.
(3) Corruption Event, May 1711. I went with 'Eradicate' (-1 Stability).
(4) With Trade Efficiency 100%, I have a 95% chance to set up a Trade Post anywhere.
(5) Russia had 'Governmental Reforms and Absolutism', January 1711. I was not scared of Russia at this point.
(6) Plague, April 1712. -1,500 population in Bago.
(7) Rebuilt the Weapons Manufactory in Laos, January 1713.
(8) Exceptional Year, July 1713. +100 ducats, inflation to zero.
(9) Or even to Regulation of the Medical Profession. (+1,500 population in Yunnan, June 1714).
(10) Refinery in Woolongong, March 1715.
(11) Monopoly Company Formed, December 1715.
(12) I was trying to compete all non-allied merchants out of Malacca, and I didn't want to waste time and relations hitting the Cambodians.
(13) Mughals chose 'Let them fight it out' in 'Succession Crisis'; March 1712
(14) Political Fragmentation followed six months later by Political Turmoil.
(15) Russia Abolishes the Patriarchate, October 1719.
(16) Unproked Revolt, January 1717
(17) Chief Judges in Bangkok, Kwai, Phuket, Perak, Malacca, Johor, Laos & Sarakham.
(18) Infrastructure 6 reached, August 1718. Next Target was Naval 11 (for a shipyard & more colonists
).(19) Goods Manufactory in Assam (the only cloth province in the Kingdom), January 1719
(20) +1 Free Subjects (now Serfdom 2), February 1720.
(21) Colonial Dynamism, December 1717. Conquistador
in Tchumkan & +3 colonists. Siberia, here I come!(22) I was spamming traders into Siberia as fast as I could go. TPs also make good places for conquistadors to overwinter in.
Semi-Lobster - If you think England's doing badly take a look at Russia - Meckenburg in Astrakhan is a new one on me!
Keravnos - The Creek have gone, sadly. But England's still going nowhere against the Iroqouis.
China's still a mess (see map). 'China' & Korea are still at war - the Chinese capital is occupied and they've got no land connection so they can't get it back. Manchu is just sitting there.
Merrick, this is another great update in a soon to be classic AAR. I thought it was especially ironic that you commented in my Khazak AAR when Mecklenburg defeated the Russians near the end of the game, and in your game Mecklenburg took an even more unlikely piece of Russia. Such wonderful unpredictability is one of the great treasures of this game.
After a solid decade of peaceful expansion and investment, are you going to make a serious military push now? Maybe against China/Manchu?
After a solid decade of peaceful expansion and investment, are you going to make a serious military push now? Maybe against China/Manchu?
Goodness gracious! Your kingdom is somewhat... um... spread out, isn't it? One might almost say 'elephantine', but of course one never would. However do you shuffle troops from one front to another? Or do you depend on scattered garrisons?
1720 already! Ah, how the years fly by. At least you are steadily climbing the tech ladder.
A nice update, by-the-way. You have a good dry, wry sense of humor but you don't overdo it. A pleasure, as always.
However do you shuffle troops from one front to another? Or do you depend on scattered garrisons?1720 already! Ah, how the years fly by. At least you are steadily climbing the tech ladder.
A nice update, by-the-way. You have a good dry, wry sense of humor but you don't overdo it. A pleasure, as always.
Another great update! And a Conquistador! Good luck in Siberia! Can we have a map of your northern provinces?
hi I just spent all of today reading the whole of this AAR and early on I was struck by inspiration and I started a game as Ayutthaya and marched south to Malacca and I annexed them after two wars but even with the CoT I couldn't manage to support my army (which was only about 20+k) and after repeatedly going bankrupt for twenty years I gave up. So how did you manage to avoid bankrupcy and still manage to conquer with such small armies. Incidentaly how big were your armies in the beginning of the game. Great AAR by the way keep it up.