The Royal Armed Forces (, ) were the armed forces of the Burmese monarchy from the 9th to 19th centuries. It refers to the military forces of the Pagan Kingdom, the Kingdom of Ava, the Hanthawaddy Kingdom, the Toungoo dynasty and the Konbaung dynasty in chronological order. The army was one of the major armed forces of Southeast Asia until it was defeated by the British over a six-decade span in the 19th century.
The army was organised into a small standing army of a few thousand, which defended the capital and the palace, and a much larger conscript-based wartime army. Conscription was based on the ahmudan system, which required local chiefs to supply their predetermined quota of men from their jurisdiction on the basis of population in times of war. The wartime army also consisted of elephantry, cavalry, artillery and naval units.
Firearms, first introduced from China in the late 14th century, became integrated into strategy only gradually over many centuries. The first special musket and artillery units, equipped with Portuguese matchlocks and cannon, were formed in the 16th century. Outside the special firearm units, there was no formal training program for the regular conscripts, who were expected to have a basic knowledge of self-defense, and how to operate the musket on their own. As the technological gap between European powers widened in the 18th century, the army was dependent on Europeans' willingness to sell more sophisticated weaponry.
While the army held more than its own against the armies of the kingdom's neighbors, its performance against more technologically advanced European armies deteriorated over time. It defeated the Portuguese and French intrusions in the 17th and 18th centuries respectively but the army could not stop the advance of the British in the 19th century, losing all three Anglo-Burmese Wars. On 1 January 1886, the millennium-old Burmese monarchy and its military arm, the Royal Burmese Armed Forces, were formally abolished by the British.
The Burmese name Tatmadaw is still the official name for today's armed forces as well in the Burmese names of their opponents such as the People's Defence Force.
Origins
The Royal Burmese Army had its origins in the military of the early Pagan Kingdom circa mid-9th century. The earliest recorded history was the foundation of the fortified city of Pagan (Bagan) in 849 by the Mranma, who had entered the Upper Irrawaddy valley along with the Nanzhao raids of the 830s that destroyed the Pyu city states. The early Pagan army consisted mainly of conscripts raised just prior to or during the times of war. Although historians believe that earlier kings like Anawrahta, who founded the Pagan Empire, must have had permanent troops on duty in the palace, the first specific mention of a standing military structure in the Burmese chronicles is 1174 when King Narapatisithu founded the Palace Guards—"two companies inner and outer, and they kept watch in ranks one behind the other". The Palace Guards became the nucleus round which the mass levy assembled in war time.
Organisation
The Royal Burmese Army was organized into three general tiers: the Palace Guards, the Ahmudan Regiments, and the field levies. Only the first two were the standing military. They protected the sovereign and the capital region, and formed the nucleus of the armed forces in wartime. The third, the field levies or conscripts, were usually raised just prior to or during wartime, and provided manpower to resist attacks and project power beyond the boundaries of the empire. Most of the field levy served in the infantry but the men for the elephantry, cavalry, artillery and naval corps were drawn from specific hereditary villages that specialized in respective military skills.
Royal Household Guards
Royal Bloodsworn Bodyguard
The King and the royal family's personal protection are under the Royal Thwei-thauks (သွေးသောက်) or Bloodsworn Guards, who were sworn under a blood oath, hence their name. They are generally made up of royal relatives and the most trusted courtiers. The term sometimes refer to the close companions of the King. The most famous example is the ethnic Mon General Binnya Dala, who was a thwei-thauk of Bayinnaung. Dala describes the men, who had sworn the blood oath as "All [of us], his chosen men, in fact, whether Shans, Mons or Burmans... declared ourselves willing to lay down our lives [for him]."
The Bloodsworns were never a permanent military body and their loyalty was personal to the individual king. Whenever a new king reigns, he would form his own bodyguard of Bloodsworn men, usually from his own retainers or relatives.