The Battle of Naungyo ( ) was a land battle fought between the armies of the Toungoo Kingdom and Hanthawaddy Kingdom during the Toungoo–Hanthawaddy War (1534–41) in late 1538. The battle was the most decisive Toungoo victory of the war. Toungoo armies led by Gen. Kyawhtin Nawrahta (later Bayinnaung) decisively defeated a numerically far superior and better armed force of Hanthawaddy led by Gen. Binnya Dala and Gen. Minye Aung Naing. Only a small portion of the Hanthawaddy forces made it to their intended destination–the fortified city of Prome (Pyay). A decimated Hanthawaddy was no longer in a position to retake the lost territories from Toungoo.
The battle is one of the most famous battles in Burmese history. It was after this battle that Kyawhtin Nawrahta was given the title of Bayinnaung (lit. Royal Elder Brother) by his brother-in-law King Tabinshwehti. The battle is deemed "the first characteristic touch of the great Bayinnaung" who later went on to found the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia.
The term "Naungyo" is an entrenched part of Burmese lexicon. It is customary to say "" (lit. "Have Naungyo spirit") or "" (lit. "Do as Bayinnaung destroyed the rafts") to encourage or urge someone to have a sink-or-swim mentality.
Origins
In the 1530s, Hanthawaddy (today's Lower Burma) was the most prosperous and powerful of all the small kingdoms that came into existence after the collapse of Pagan Empire in 1287. Toungoo was a former vassal state of Ava, founded only in 1510. When Ava fell to the Confederation of Shan States in 1527, Toungoo was surrounded by larger kingdoms on all sides: the Confederation in the north, its vassal Prome in the west, and Hanthawaddy in the south. Toungoo's remote location–east of the Bago Yoma mountain range and away from the main Irrawaddy river waterway–proved a good shelter for many refugees fleeing from Ava.
Toungoo–Hanthawaddy War
Though the larger kingdoms were not necessarily hostile to Toungoo yet, Tabinshwehti decided not to wait and took the initiative. He chose Hanthawaddy as his target because its king Takayutpi was an ineffective ruler who was not respected by his own governors. Beginning in late 1534, Toungoo began annual dry-season raids into Hanthawaddy territory. For three consecutive years, Toungoo could not make headway against Pegu's (Bago's) fortified defenses led by two experienced ministers and aided by foreign mercenaries with guns. Unable to break the defenses, Toungoo finally used a stratagem to create a split in the Hanthawaddy camp. Takayutpi foolishly believed Toungoo's misinformation about the loyalty of the two ministers, who had been his tutors since childhood and were absolutely devoted to him, and executed them.
When Toungoo again invaded in late 1538, Takayutpi, now without his best generals, lost heart and fled Pegu for Prome (Pyay) where his brother-in-law Narapati was king. Toungoo took the capital city of Pegu without firing a shot. Takayutpi did not retreat to Martaban, which nominally was Hanthawaddy territory because he did not trust the governor there, Saw Binnya, also his brother-in-law. Instead he chose to go to Prome which was a vassal of the Confederation-held Ava.
Flight for Prome
The course of retreat was through the Irrawaddy delta. The direct route from Pegu to Prome, though much shorter, involved crossing the Bago Yoma range, and was not practical for large armies. Takayutpi divided the retreating Hanthawaddy forces into two. Five divisions of the army marched by land. Takayutpi and the remaining troops sailed by river in 700 boats.
At Pegu, Tabinshwehti and his deputy Bayinnaung well understood that they had gained Pegu only through a ruse, and that Hanthawaddy's military had not been defeated yet. Their top priority was to meet and defeat the Hanthawaddy army before they got inside the fortified walls of Prome. This was based on their unsuccessful sieges of a fortified Pegu (1534–1537). They knew that a large body of enemy inside walls with better leadership would pose a huge problem for their tenuous hold on Lower Burma. Tabinshwehti sent Bayinnaung with a small army to chase the retreating army while he sailed up to Prome with his flotilla of war boats to chase Takayutpi's flotilla.
Bayinnaung's light troops caught up with the larger Hanthawaddy army at Naungyo, just separated by a river. (For all its fame, the exact location of Naungyo is not known. Chronicles simply report Naungyo as a delta town en route to Prome. A group of Burmese historians led by Than Tun retraced the battle route in 1982 and concluded that Naungyoe might be somewhere around Panmawaddy River in Einme Township in Ayeyarwady Region.)