Clash of the titans
How Naresuan won independence with an elephant duel
The Suphan Buri province is home to one of Thailand’s most popular tourist attractions, a towering statue of King Naresuan on his battle elephant. It is supposedly built over the exact site of the battlefield of Nong Sarai, where Naresuan fought the most famous duel in Thai history.
In 1593, the Burmese army, under crown prince Mingyi Swa, marched towards Ayutthaya while Naresuan and his troops marched west from the city. They met outside the small village of Nong Sarai, where their armies clashed. Naresuan’s battle elephant may have panicked, and accidentally ran straight into the fray.
Naresuan spotted Mingyi Swa on his own elephant and famously challenged him to a duel. According to legend, the two armies stopped fighting and circled their leaders. The duel only lasted a few minutes but is recorded in dozens of paintings and even re-enacted in Thai action movies. In one version of the story, Mingyi Swa slashed at Naresuan with his long-handled war scythe but only nicked the king’s hat. Extending his scythe once more, he exposed his body and Naresuan delivered a swift, fatal blow. Their crown prince killed, the Burmese army scattered.
“Naresuan quickly dispatched his rival with a mortal slash”
In 1590, King Maha Thammarachathirat died, making Naresuan the sovereign ruler of Ayutthaya. While he devoted some of his energy to centralising political power and reforming the traditional patronage system enjoyed by princes, he also acted as a diplomat and ambassador, signing trade agreements with Portugal and Spain. But Naresuan’s greatest talents were as a savvy military strategist and cunning warrior.
The final showdown
Naresuan’s greatest moment came during a lastditch attempt by the Burmese army to crush the rebellious Ayutthaya state in 1593. The warrior king’s spies sent word that Nanda Bayin’s army was on the move yet again, led by his eldest son, Mingyi Swa.
Thai legend likes to suggest that Swa might have been an old rival of Naresuan — that they may have been sparring partners who fought during those hand-to-hand combat lessons of his youth. However, Swa was three years younger than Naresuan and there’s no hard evidence that says they fought until this fateful day.
Rather than hunker down behind the city walls, Naresuan marched his army west to intercept the enemy forces that were descending from the dramatic Three Pagodas Pass. The two armies met near the small village of Nong Sarai and engaged in a bloody, drawn-out battle that initially favoured the Burmese. However, the tide turned when Naresuan, mounted on his battle elephant, allegedly challenged Swa.
“Come forth, and let us fight an elephant duel for the honour of our kingdoms”, he jeered at his opponent. The two men faced off atop their trusty steeds, armed with razor-sharp war scythes and surrounded by their battle-weary armies. Dodging an errant joust by Swa, Naresuan quickly dispatched his rival with a mortal slash. Their leader dead before their eyes, the Burmese fled.
The battle proved to be a critical turning point in the long-standing Burmese-thai conflict.
Before Nanda Bayin could conscript new forces to retaliate for the death of his son, civil war broke out among contenders for the crown prince’s throne. Sensing an opportunity, Naresuan turned the tables on the Burmese and sent generals to capture their territory. Siam claimed port cities in the coastal Burmese region of Tenasserim, winning unrestricted military and trade access to the Indian Ocean.
Emboldened, the sovereign then invaded Cambodia, toppling the Khmer king and returning to Ayutthaya with thousands of prisoners of war to repopulate Northern Thailand.
At the very spot of his famous victory at
Nong Sarai, Naresuan ordered the building of a pagoda (or chedi in Thai), a version of which still exists today. Before his death in 1605 during a military campaign, he also led army expeditions deep into a greatly weakened Burma, through the now-ruined capital of Pegu up to Toungoo. Setting his sights northwards, the great Siamese king brought the old fortified city of Chiang Mai under Ayutthaya influence.