ABSTRACT
Once the reconquest of Siam was accomplished, Taksin had himself coronated as the new king of Siam, but shortly after his installation, in 1781, a palace revolt broke out. Taksin had apparently lost command of his senses, and his paranoid reprisals against imagined conspirators ex ceeded the bounds of his courtiers' tolerance. Taksin was taken prisoner and executed in the fashion reserved for royalty, who by Siamese tradition ruled by divine right and so assumed the mantle of divinity themselves. He was put into a velvet sack and clubbed to death, so that the royal blood would not be defiled by the earth. One of Taksin's generals, Thong Duang, was recalled from a campaign and crowned king in 1782 by consensus of the court. The new king, who took the title of Ramathibodi, became the founder of the Chakkri Dynasty, which still supplies the now largely ceremonial royal office with the nominal rulers of modern Thailand.
