The Sino-Burmese War of 1765 to 1769 was born from the Qianlong Emperor's refusal to accept failure. Two earlier invasions using the Green Standard Army and Yunnan border troops had been repulsed, and each defeat only stiffened the emperor's resolve. For the third attempt in late 1767, he sent his own nephew Mingrui with the empire's elite Manchu Bannermen -- soldiers drawn from the freezing grasslands along the Russian border, men trained for steppe warfare now marching into tropical jungle. The plan was a classic pincer: Mingrui would lead 30,000 troops through Hsenwi, Lashio, and Hsipaw toward the Burmese capital of Ava, while a second force of 15,000 under General E'erdeng'e would push through Bhamo from the north. Together, they would crush the Konbaung dynasty.

At first, the plan worked. Mingrui's main force defeated the Burmese army at the Battle of Goteik Gorge and raced toward Ava, sweeping aside resistance. But the Burmese did not break. General Teingya Minkhaung launched guerrilla attacks along the impossibly long supply lines stretching back to Yunnan, and the northern pincer under E'erdeng'e exhausted itself battering the Kaungton fort before retreating -- against orders -- back to China. Mingrui reached the outskirts of Ava only to find himself overextended, unsupported, and playing for time that would never come. Meanwhile, veteran Burmese troops who had been fighting in Siam returned home, and Generals Maha Thiha Thura and Ne Myo Sithu retook the Qing supply base at Hsenwi. The Bannermen, bred for cold northern winters, began dying of malaria in the furnace heat of central Burma.

Mingrui abandoned hope of taking Ava and ordered a retreat toward China. A Burmese force of 10,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry under the newly promoted Maha Thiha Thura stalked the withdrawing column. Thiha Thura split his army: the smaller division under Maha Sithu engaged the Qing head-on, absorbing the initial counterattack before pulling archers and musketeers into the jungle to harass the flanks and ambush foraging parties. While Mingrui focused on Sithu's harassment, Thiha Thura led the larger force through the mountains to emerge directly behind the Chinese column. The encirclement was complete. Over three days of fighting near Maymyo, the Burmese whittled down the starving, disease-ravaged army. Desperate breakout attempts against Sithu's infantry failed. Trapped between infantry ahead, musket fire from the jungle, and Thiha Thura's main force closing from behind, the Qing army was destroyed. Aside from roughly 2,500 men taken prisoner, the entire invasion force perished.

When the Qianlong Emperor received news of the catastrophe, his shock turned to fury. He dispatched a fourth invasion in 1769 under his chief grand councilor Fuheng, with an even larger army. This force also bogged down at the frontier, unable to penetrate Burmese defenses. But the war's most remarkable decision belonged to Maha Thiha Thura. The general who had orchestrated the annihilation at Maymyo understood that destroying another Chinese army would only harden Beijing's determination. Burma's losses, while far smaller than China's, were heavy relative to its population. Rather than pursue total victory again, Thiha Thura took an extraordinary risk: without informing his own king, he negotiated terms with the Qing commanders and oversaw their retreat back to Yunnan. It was an act of strategic pragmatism that ended a war Burma was winning on the battlefield but could not sustain indefinitely -- a decision as consequential as the battle itself.