First Burmese invasion of Assam

01The Borphukan goes to Ava

Purnananda Burhagohain had held the Ahom kingdom together after the Moamoria and Dundiya risings. In 1815 he moved to arrest Badan Chandra Borphukan, the viceroy at Guwahati, for oppressing the people of Lower Assam. Warned by his daughter, who was married into the Burhagohain’s own family, Badan Chandra escaped to Bengal and then to Calcutta. The Company would not help him. A Burmese envoy in Calcutta took him to the court of King Bodawpaya, who agreed to send an army.

02Ghiladhari

The Burmese army entered Assam in January 1817 with Badan Chandra at its head. The Ahom forces met it at Ghiladhari on 27 March 1817, and the fighting went on for a week. Then word came that Purnananda had died at Jorhat; the chronicles say he collapsed on learning that Badan Chandra was with the enemy. His son Ruchinath took his office, quarrelled with the young king Chandrakanta Singha, and fled west. The army, without orders or reinforcements, gave up.

03A price paid to Ava

Chandrakanta received Badan Chandra and made him chief minister. The Burmese were paid off with money, presents and an Ahom princess, Hemo Aideo, sent with fifty elephants as a bride for Bodawpaya, and they left in April 1817. Badan Chandra ruled by terror for a year until he was assassinated in 1818. That killing gave Ava its reason to come back, and the second invasion followed in 1819.