Before inducting the reader to more particular acquaintance with his
Excellency Chow Phya Sri-Sury Wongse Samuha-P'hra Kralahome, I have
thought that "an abstract and brief chronicle" of the times of the
strange people over whom he is not less than second in dignity and
power, would not be out of place.
In the opinion of Pickering, the Siamese are undoubtedly Malay; but a
majority of the intelligent Europeans who have lived long among them
regard the native population as mainly Mongolian. They are generally of
medium stature, the face broad, the forehead low, the eyes black, the
cheekbones prominent, the chin retreating, the mouth large, the lips
thick, and the beard scanty. In common with most of the Asiatic races,
they are apt to be indolent, improvident, greedy, intemperate, servile,
cruel, vain, inquisitive, superstitious, and cowardly; but individual
variations from the more repulsive types are happily not rare. In public
they are scrupulously polite and decorous according to their own notions
of good manners, respectful to the aged, affectionate to their kindred,
and bountiful to their priests, of whom more than twenty thousand are
supported by voluntary contributions in Bangkok alone. Marriage is
contracted at sixteen for males, and fourteen for females, and polygamy
is the common practice, without limit to the number of wives except such
as may be imposed by the humble estate or poverty of the husband; the
women are generally treated with consideration.
The bodies of the dead are burned; and the badges of mourning are white
robes for those of the family or kinfolk who are younger than the
deceased, black for those who are older, and shaven heads for all who
are in inferior degrees connected with the dead, either as descendants,
dependents, servants, or slaves. When a king dies the entire population,
with the exception of very young children, must display this tonsorial
uniform.
Every ancient or famous city of Siam has a story of its founding, woven
for it from tradition or fable; and each of these legends is
distinguished from the others by peculiar features. The religion,
customs, arts, and literature of a people naturally impart to their
annals a spirit all their own. Especially is this the case in the
Orient, where the most original and suggestive thought is half disguised
in the garb of metaphor, and where, in spite of vivid fancies and fiery
passions, the people affect taciturnity or reticence, and delight in the
metaphysical and the mystic. Hence the early annals of the Siamese, or
Sajamese, abound in fables of heroes, demigods, giants, and genii, and
afford but few facts of practical value. Swayed by religious influences,
they joined, in the spirit of the Hebrews, the name of God to the titles
of their rulers and princes, whom they almost deified after death. But
the skeleton sketch of the history of Siam that follows is of
comparatively modern date, and may be accepted as in the main authentic.
In the year 712 of the Siamese, and 1350 of the Christian era,
Phya-Othong founded, near the river Meinam, about sixty miles from the
Gulf of Siam, the city of Ayudia or Ayuthia ("the Abode of the Gods");
at the same time he assumed the title of P'hra Rama Thibodi. This
capital and stronghold was continually exposed to storms of civil war
and foreign invasion; and its turreted battlements and ponderous gates,
with the wide deep moat spanned by drawbridges, where now is a forest of
great trees, were but the necessary fences behind which court and
garrison took shelter from the tempestuous barbarism in the midst of
which they lived. But before any portion of the city, except that facing
the river, could boast of a fortified enclosure, hostile enterprises
were directed against it. Birman pirates, ascending the Meinam in
formidable flotillas, harassed it. Thrice they ravaged the country
around; but on the last of these occasions great numbers of them were
captured and put to cruel death by P'hra Rama Suen, successor to
Thibodi, who pursued the routed remnant to the very citadel of
Chiengmai, then a tributary of the Birman Empire. Having made successful
war upon this province, and impressed thousands of Laotian captives, he
next turned his arms against Cambodia, took the capital by storm, slew
every male capable of bearing arms, and carried off enormous treasures
in plate gold, with which, on his return to his kingdom, he erected a
remarkable pagoda, called to this day "The Mountain of Gold."
P'hra Rama Suen was succeeded by his son Phya Ram, who reigned fourteen
years, and was assassinated by his uncle, Inthra Racha, the governor or
feudal lord of the city, who had snatched the reins of government and
sent three of his sons to rule over the northern provinces. At the death
of Inthra Racha, in 780, two of these princes set out simultaneously,
with the design of seizing and occupying the vacant throne. Mounted on
elephants, they met in the dusk of evening on a bridge leading to the
Royal Palace; and each instantly divining his brother's purpose, they
dismounted, and with their naked swords fell upon each other with such
fury that both were slain on the spot. The political and social
disorganization that prevailed at this period was aggravated by the
vulnerable condition of the monarchy, then recently transferred to a new
line. Princes of the blood royal were for a long time engaged, brother
against brother, in fierce family feuds. Ayuthia suffered gravely from
these unnatural contentions, but even more from the universal license
and riot that reigned among the nobility and the proud proprietors of
the soil. In the distracted and enfeebled state of all authority, royal
and magisterial, the fields around remained for many years untilled; and
the only evidence the land presented of the abode of man was here and
there the bristling den of some feudal chief, a mere outlaw and dacoit,
who rarely sallied from it but to carry torch and pillage wherever there
was aught to sack or burn.
In 834 the undisputed sovereignty of the kingdom fell to another P'hra
Rama Thibodi, who reigned thirty years, and is famous in Siamese annals
for the casting of a great image of Buddha, fifty cubits high, of gold
very moderately alloyed with copper. On an isolated hill, in a sacred
enclosure, he erected for this image a stately temple of the purest
white marble, approached by a graceful flight of steps. From the ruins
of its eastern front, which are still visible, it appears to have had
six columns at either end and thirteen on each side; the eastern
pediment is adorned with sculptures, as are also the ten metopes.
P'hra Rama Thibodi was succeeded by his son, P'hra Racha Kuman, whose
reign was short, and chiefly memorable for a tremendous conflagration
that devastated Ayuthia. It raged three days, and destroyed more than a
hundred thousand houses.
This monarch left at his death but one son, P'hra Yot-Fa, a lad of
twelve, whose mother, the Queen Sisudah-Chand, was appointed regent
during his minority.
The devil of ambition has rarely possessed the heart of an Eastern queen
more absolutely than it did that of this infamous woman,--infamous even
in heathen annals. She is said to have graced her exalted station alike
by the beauty of her person and the charm of her manner; but in pursuit
of the most arbitrary and audacious purposes she moved with the
recklessness their nature demanded, and with equal impatience trampled
on friend and rival. Blind superstition was the only weak point in her
character; but though her deference to the imaginary instructions or
warnings of the stars was slavish, it does not seem to have deterred her
from any false or cruel course; indeed, a cunning astrologer of her
court, by scaring her with visionary perils, contrived to obtain a
monstrous ascendency over her mind, only to plunge her into crime more
deeply than by her own weight of wickedness she might have sunk. She
ordered the secret assassination of every member of the royal household
(not excepting her mother and sisters), who, however mildly, opposed her
will. Besotted with fear, that fruitful mother of crime, she ended by
putting to death the young king, her son, and publicly calling her
paramour (the court astrologer, in whose thoughts, she believed, were
hidden all the secrets of divination) to the throne of the P'hrabatts.
This double crime filled the measure of her impunity. The nobility
revolted. The strength of their faction lay, not within the palace,
which was filled with the queen's parasites, but with the feudal
proprietors of the soil, who, exasperated by the abominations of the
court, only waited for a chance to crush it. One day, as the queen and
her paramour were proceeding in a barge on their customary visit to her
private pagoda and garden,--a paradise of all the floral wonders of the
tropics,--a nobleman, who had followed them, hailed the royal gondola,
as if for instructions, and, being permitted to approach, suddenly
sprang upon the guilty pair, drew his sword, and dispatched them both,
careless of their loud cries for help. Almost simultaneously with the
performance of this tragic exploit, the nobles offered the crown to an
uncle of the murdered heir, who had fled from the court and taken refuge
in a monastery. Having accepted it and assumed the title of
Maha-Charapât Racha-therat, he invaded Pegu with a hundred thousand
men-at-arms, five thousand war elephants, and seven thousand horse. With
this mighty host he marched against Henzawadi, the capital of Pegu,
laying waste the country as he went with fire and sword. The king of
Pegu came out to meet him, accompanied by his romantic and intrepid
queen, Maha Chandra, and supported by the few devoted followers that on
so short a notice he could bring together. In consideration of this
great disparity of forces, the two kings agreed, in the chivalric spirit
of the time, to decide the fortune of the day by single combat. Hardly
had they encountered, when the elephant on which the king of Pegu was
mounted took fright and fled the field; but his queen promptly took his
place, and fighting rashly, fell, speared through the right breast. She
was borne off amid the clash of cymbals and flourish of trumpets that
hailed the victor.
Maha-Charapât Racha-therat was a great prince. His wisdom, valor, and
heroic exploits supplied the native bards with inspiring themes. By his
magnanimity he extinguished the envy of the neighboring princes and
transformed rivals into friends. Jealous rulers became his willing
vassals, not from fear of his power, but in admiration for his virtues.
Malacca, Tenasserim, Ligor, Thavai, Martaban, Maulmain, Songkhla,
Chantaboon, Phitsanulok, Look-Kho-Thai, Phi-chi, Savan Khalok, Phechit,
Cambodia, and Nakhon Savan were all dependencies of Siam under his
reign.
In the year 1568 of the Christian era the Siamese territory was invaded
and laid under tribute by a Birman king named Mandanahgri, who must have
been a warrior of Napoleonic genius, for he extended his dominion as far
as the confines of China. It is remarkable that the flower of his army
was composed of several thousand Portuguese, tried troops in good
discipline, commanded by the noted Don Diego Suanes. These, like the
famous Scotch Legion of Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years' War, were
mercenaries, and doubtless contributed importantly to the success of the
Birman arms. Theirs is by no means the only case of Portuguese soldiers
serving for hire in the armies of the East. Their commander, Suanes,
seems to have been a brave and accomplished officer, and to have been
intrusted with undivided control of the Birmese forces.
Mandanahgri held the queen of Siam and her two sons as hostages for the
payment of the tribute he had levied; but the princes were permitted to
return to Siam after a few years of captivity in Birmah, and in 1583
their captor died. His successor struggled with an uncle for possession
of the throne, and the king of Siam, seizing the opportunity, declared
himself independent; wherefore a more formidable army was shortly sent
against him, under command of the eldest son of the king of Birmah. But
one of the young princes who had been led into captivity by Mandanahgri
now sat on the throne of Siam. In his youth he had been styled "the
Black Prince," a title of distinction which seems to have fitted his
characteristics not less appropriately than it did those of the English
Edward. Undismayed by the strength and fury of the enemy, he attacked
and routed them in a pitched battle, killing their leader with his own
hands, invaded Pegu, and besieged its capital; but was finally compelled
to retire with considerable loss. The Black Prince was succeeded by "the
White King," who reigned peacefully for many years.
The next monarch especially worthy of notice is P'hra Narai, who sent
ambassadors to Goa, the most important of the Portuguese
trading-stations in the East Indies, chiefly to invite the Portuguese of
Malacca to establish themselves in Siam for mutual advantages of trade.
The welcome emissaries were sumptuously entertained, and a Dominican
friar accompanied them on their return, with costly presents for the
king. This friar found P'hra Narai much more liberal in his ideas than
later ambassadors, even to this day, have found any other ruler of Siam.
He agreed not only to permit all Portuguese merchants to establish
themselves anywhere in his dominions, but to exempt their goods and
wares from duty. The Dominican monks were likewise invited to build
churches and preach Christianity in Siam.
Soon after this extraordinary display of liberal statesmanship P'hra
Narai narrowly escaped death by a strange conspiracy. Four or five
hundred Japanese adventurers were secretly introduced into the country
by an ambitious feudal proprietor, who had conceived the mad design of
dethroning the monarch and reigning in his stead; but the king, warned
of the planned attack upon the palace, seized the native conspirator and
put him to death. The Japanese, on the contrary, were enrolled as a kind
of praetorian guard, or janissaries; in this character, however, their
pride and power became so formidable that the king grew uneasy and
disbanded them.
P'hra Narai, from all accounts, was a man to be respected and esteemed.
The events and the _dramatis personae_ of his reign form a story so
romantic, so exceptional even in Eastern annals, that, but for the
undoubted authenticity of this chapter of Siamese history, it would be
incredible. It was during his reign that the whimsical attempt was made
by Louis XIV. to conquer Siam and proselyte her king. An extraordinary
spectacle! One of the most licentious monarchs of France, who to the
last breathed an atmosphere poisoned with scepticism, and more than
Buddhism itself subversive of the true principles of Christianity, is
suddenly inspired with an apparently devout longing to be the instrument
of converting to the true faith the princes of the East. To this end he
employs that wily, powerful, and indefatigable body of daring priests,
the Jesuits, who were then in the very ardor of their missionary
schemes.
Ostensibly for the purpose of propagating the Gospel, but with more
reality aspiring to extend their subtile influence over all mankind,
this society, with means the most slender and in the face of obstacles
the most disheartening, have, with indomitable courage and supernatural
patience, accomplished labors unparalleled in the achievements of mind.
Now, in the wilds of Western America, taming and teaching races of whose
existence the world of refinement had never heard; now climbing the icy
steeps and tracking the wastes and wildernesses of Siberia, or with the
evangel of John in one hand and the art of Luke in the other, bringing
life to the bodies and souls of perishing multitudes under a scorching
equatorial sun,--there is not a spot of earth in which European
civilization has taken root where traces of Jesuit forethought and
careful, patient husbandry may not be found. So in Siam, we discover a
monarch of consummate acumen, more European than Asiatic in his ideas,
sedulously cultivating the friendship of these foreign workers of
wonders; and finally we find a Greek adventurer officiating as prime
minister to this same king, and conducting his affairs with that ability
and success which must have commanded intellectual admiration, even if
they had not been inspired and promoted by motives of integrity toward
the monarch who had so implicitly confided in his wisdom and fidelity.
Constantine Phaulkon was the son of respectable parents, natives of the
island of Cephalonia, where he was born in 1630. The geography, if not
the very name, of the kingdom whose affairs he was destined to direct
was quite unknown to his compatriots of the Ionian Isles,--even when as
a mariner, wrecked on the coast of Malabar, he became a fellow-passenger
with a party of Siamese officials, his companions in disaster, who were
returning to their country from an embassy. The facile Greek quickly
learned to talk with his new-found friends in their own tongue, and by
his accomplishments and adroitness made a place for himself in their
admiration and influence, so that he was received with flattering
consideration at the Court of P'hra Narai, and very soon invited to take
service under government. By his sagacity, tact, and diligence in the
management of all affairs intrusted to him, he rapidly rose in favor
with his patron, who finally elevated him to the highest post of honor
in the state: he was made premier.
The star of the Cephalonian waif and adventurer had now mounted to the
zenith, and was safe to shine for many years with unabated brilliancy;
to this day he is remembered by the expressive term _Vicha-yen_, "the
cool wisdom." The French priests, elated at his success, spared no
promises or arts to retain him secretly in their interest. Under
circumstances so extraordinary and auspicious, the plans of the Jesuits
for the conversion of all Eastern Asia were put in execution. From the
Vatican bishops were appointed, and sent out to Cochin China, Cambodia,
Siam, and Pegu, while the people of those several kingdoms were yet
profoundly ignorant of the amiable intentions of the Pope. Francis
Pallu, M. De la Motte Lambert, and Ignatius Cotolendy were the
respective exponents of this pious idea, under the imposing titles of
Bishops of Heliopolis, Borytus, Byzantium, and Metellopolis,--all
Frenchmen, for Louis XIV. insisted that the glory of the enterprise
should be ascribed exclusively to France and to himself.
But all their efforts to convert the king were of no avail. The Jesuits,
however, opened schools, and have ever since labored assiduously and
with success to introduce the ideas and the arts of Europe into those
countries.
After some years P'hra Narai sent an embassy to the Court of Louis, who
was so sensible of the flattery that he immediately reciprocated with an
embassy of his own, with more priests, headed by the Chevalier De
Chaumont and the Père Tachard. The French fleet of five ships cast
anchor in the Meinam on the 27th of September, 1687, and the Chevalier
and his reverend colleague, attended by Jesuits, were promptly and
graciously received by the king, who, however, expressed his "fears"
that the chief object of their mission might not prove so easy of
attainment as they had been led to believe. As for Phaulkon, he had
adroitly deceived the Jesuits from the first, and made all parties
instruments to promote his own shrewd and secret plans.
De Chaumont, disheartened by his failure, sailed back to France, where
he arrived in 1688, in the height of the agitation attending the English
Revolution of that year.
Phaulkon, finding that he could no longer conceal from the Jesuits the
king's repugnance to their plans for his conversion, placed himself
under their direction and control; for though he had not as yet
conceived the idea of seizing upon the crown, it was plain that he
aspired to honors higher than the premiership. Then rumors of
disaffection among the nobles were diligently propagated by the French
priests, who, although not sufficiently powerful to dethrone the king,
were nevertheless dangerous inciters of rebellion among the common
people.
Meanwhile the king of Johore, then a tributary of Siam, instigated by
the Dutch, who, from the first, had watched with jealousy the
machinations of the French, sent envoys to P'hra Narai, to advise the
extermination or expulsion of the French, and to proffer the aid of his
troops; but the proposition was rejected with indignation.
These events were immediately followed by another, known in Siamese
history as the Revolt of the Macassars, which materially promoted the
ripening of the revolution of which the French had sown the seeds.
Celebes, a large, irregular island east of Borneo, includes a district
known as Macassar, the ruler of which had been arbitrarily dethroned by
the Dutch; and the sons of the injured monarch, taking refuge in Siam,
secretly encouraged the growing enmity of the nobles against the French.
Meanwhile Phaulkon, by his address, and skilful management of public
affairs, continued to exercise paramount influence over the mind of the
king. He persuaded P'hra Narai to send another embassy to France, which
arrived happily (the former having been shipwrecked off the Cape of Good
Hope) at the Court of Louis XIV. in 1689. He also diligently and ably
advanced the commercial strength of the country; merchants from all
parts of the world were invited to settle in Siam, and factories of
every nation were established along the banks of the Meinam. Both Ayudia
and Lophaburee became busy and flourishing. He was careful to keep the
people employed, and applied himself with vigor to improving the
agriculture of the country. Rice, sugar, corn, and palm-oil constituting
the most fruitful and regular source of revenue, he wisely regulated the
traffic in those staples, and was studious to promote the security and
happiness of the great body of the population engaged or concerned in
their production. The laws he framed were so sound and stable, and at
the same time so wisely conformable to the interests alike of king and
subject, that to this day they constitute the fundamental law of the
land.
Phaulkon designed and built the palaces at Lophaburee, consisting of two
lofty edifices, square, with pillars on all sides; each pillar was made
to represent a succession of shafts by the intervention of salient
blocks, forming capitals to what they surmounted and pedestals to what
they supported. The apartments within were gorgeously gilt and
sumptuously furnished. There yet remains, in remarkable preservation, a
vermilion chamber looking toward the east; though, otherwise, a forest
of stately trees and several broken arches alone mark the spot where
dwelt in regal splendor this foreign favorite of P'hra Narai.
He also erected the famous castle on the west of the town, on a piece of
ground, near the north bank of the river, which formerly belonged to a
Buddhist monastery.
Finally, to keep off the Birman invaders, he built a wall, surmounted
along its whole extent by a parapet, and fortified with towers at
regular intervals of forty fathoms, as well as by four larger ones at
its extremities on the banks of the river, below the two bridges. Its
gates appear to have been twelve or thirteen in number, and the extent
of the southern portion is fixed at two thousand fathoms. Suburban
villages still exist on both sides of the river, and, beyond these, the
religious buildings, which have been restored, but which now display the
fantastic rather than the grand style which distinguished the
architecture of this consummate Grecian, whom the people name with
wonder,--all marvellous works being by them attributed to gods, genii,
devils, or the "Vicha-yen."
But the luxury in which the haughty statesman revelled, his towering
ambition, and the wealth he lavished on his private abodes, joined to
the lofty, condescending air he assumed toward the nobles, soon provoked
their jealous murmurings against him and his too partial master; and
when, at last, the king, falling ill, repaired to the premier's palace
at Lophaburee, some of the more disaffected nobles, headed by a natural
son of P'hra Narai and the two princes of Macassar, forced their way
into the palace to slay the monarch. But the brave old man, at a glance
divining their purpose, leaped from his couch and, seizing his sword,
threw himself upon it, and died as his assassins entered.
In the picturesque drama of Siamese history no figure appears so truly
noble and brilliant as this king, not merely renowned by the glory of
his military exploits and the happy success of his more peaceful
undertakings, but beloved for his affectionate concern for the welfare
of his subjects, his liberality, his moderation, his modesty, his
indifference to the formal honors due to his royal state, and (what is
most rare in Asiatic character) his sincere aversion to flattery, his
shyness even toward deserved and genuine praise.
Turning from the corpse of the king, the baffled regicides dashed at the
luxurious apartment where Phaulkon slumbered, as was his custom of an
afternoon, unattended save by his fair young daughter Constantia.
Breaking in, they tore the sleeping father from the arms of his agonized
child, who with piteous implorings offered her life for his, bound him
with cords, dragged him to the woods beyond his garden, and there,
within sight of the lovely little Greek chapel he had erected for his
private devotions, first tortured him like fiends, and then, dispatching
him, flung his body into a pit. His daughter, following them, clung fast
to her father, and, though her heart bled and her brain grew numb
between the gashes and the groans, she still cheered him with her
passionate endearments; and, holding before his eyes a cross of gold
that always hung on her bosom, inspired him to die like a brave man and
a Christian. After that the lovely heroine was dragged into slavery and
concubinage by the infamous Chow Dua, one of the bloodiest of the gang.
Even pagan chroniclers do not fail to render homage to so brave a man,
of whom they tell that "he bore all with a fortitude and defiance that
astounded the monsters who slew him, and convinced them that he derived
his supernatural courage and contempt of pain from the miraculous
virtues of his daughter's golden cross." After the death of the able
premier, the Birmese again overran the land, laying waste the fields,
and besieging the city of Ayuthia for two years. Finding they could not
reduce it by famine, they tried flames, and the burning is said to have
lasted two whole months. One of the feudal lords of Siam, Phya Tâk, a
Chinese adventurer, who had amassed wealth, and held the office of
governor of the northern provinces under the late king, seeing the
impending ruin of the country, assembled his personal followers and
dependants, and with about a thousand hardy and resolute warriors
retired to the mountain fastness of Naghon Najok, whence from time to
time he swooped down to harass the encampments of the Birmese, who were
almost invariably worsted in the skirmishes he provoked. He then moved
upon Bangplasoi, and the people of that place came out with gifts of
treasure and hailed him as their sovereign. Thence he sailed to Rajong,
strengthened his small force with volunteers in great numbers, marched
against Chantaboon, whose governor had disputed his authority, and
executed that indiscreet official; levied another large army; built and
equipped a hundred vessels of war; and set sail--a part of his army
preceding him overland--for Kankhoa, on the confines of Cochin China,
which place he brought to terms in less than three hours. Thence he
pushed on to Cambodia, and arriving there on the Siamese Sabâto, or
Sabbath, he issued a solemn proclamation to his army, assuring them that
he would that evening worship in the temple of the famous emerald idol,
P'hra Këau. Every man was ordered to arm as if for battle, but to wear
the sacred robe,--white for the laity, yellow for the clergy; and all
the priests who followed his fortunes were required to lead the way into
the grand temple through the southern portico, over which stood a
triple-headed tower. Then the conqueror, having prepared himself by
fasting and purification, clad in his sacred robes and armed to the
teeth, followed and made his words good. Almost his first act was to
send his ships to the adjacent provinces for supplies of rice and grain,
which he dispensed so bountifully to the famishing people that they
gratefully accepted his rule.
This king is described as an enthusiastic and indefatigable warrior,
scorning palaces, and only happy in camp or at the head of his army. His
people found in him a true friend, he was ever kind and generous to the
poor, and to his soldiers he paid fivefold the rates of former reigns.
But toward the nobles he was haughty, rude, exacting. It is supposed
that his prime minister, fearing to oppose him openly, corrupted his
chief concubine, and with her assistance drugged his food; so that he
was rendered insane, and, imagining himself a god, insisted that
sacrifices and offerings should be made to him, and began to levy upon
the nobility for enormous sums, often putting them to the torture to
extort treasure. Instigated by their infuriated lords, the people now
rebelled against their lately idolized master, and attacked him in his
palace, from, which he fled by a secret passage to an adjoining
monastery, in the disguise of a priest. But the premier, to whom he was
presently betrayed, had him put to death, on the pretext that he might
cause still greater scandal and disaster, but in reality to establish
himself in undisputed possession of the throne, which he now usurped
under the title of P'hra-Phuthi-Chow-Luang, and removed the palace from
the west to the east bank of the Meinam. During his reign the Birmese
made several attempts to invade the country, but were invariably
repulsed with loss.
This brings us to the uneventful reign of Phen-den-Klang; and by his
death, in 1825, to the beginning of the story of his Majesty, Maha
Mongkut, the late supreme king, and my employer, with whom, in these
pages, we shall have much to do.