For centuries, the Kingdom of Lan Xang had unified the Lao peoples under a single crown. That unity collapsed in 1707 when Kitsarat, an heir of the great King Sourigna Vongsa, declared the separation of Luang Prabang from the kingdom. He marched south against King Setthathirath II, who turned to the Siamese kingdom of Ayutthaya for military support. The Siamese army helped defend Vientiane, but they could not prevent the split. Kitsarat crowned himself king of a new Kingdom of Luang Prabang in the north. What remained became the Kingdom of Vientiane. Within a few years, the southern kingdom of Champasak and the principality of Muang Phuan also broke away. The great Lan Xang was finished, replaced by rival Lao states that would spend the next century being drawn into the orbits of larger, more powerful neighbors.

Geography made Vientiane a prize and a victim. Sitting on the Mekong at the crossroads of mainland Southeast Asia, the kingdom attracted the attention of every regional power. In 1773, when Luang Prabang forces attacked, King Ong Bun turned to Burma's Konbaung dynasty for protection, making Vientiane a Burmese vassal. This infuriated the Siamese court at Thonburi. After the Burmese-Siamese War of 1775-76, King Taksin dispatched General Phraya Chakri -- the future King Rama I -- to punish Vientiane. Siamese forces sacked the city in 1779, carrying off its most treasured possessions, including the Emerald Buddha. Ong Bun submitted to Siamese authority. When he revolted again two years later, he was captured and executed. The kingdom survived, but only as a dependency of Siam, its rulers chosen and controlled by Bangkok.

The last king of Vientiane was also its most defiant. Anouvong ascended in 1805 and spent two decades preparing a rebellion against Siamese dominance. In December 1826, he launched his bid for independence, sending an army of 10,000 men across the Khorat Plateau toward Nakhon Ratchasima. The initial advance succeeded, but the Siamese organized a massive counterattack. By 1827, Siamese armies had reached Vientiane itself. This time there would be no vassalage, no puppet king installed on a diminished throne. The Siamese burned the city to the ground. They stripped it of every treasure and forcibly relocated the entire population. Anouvong was captured and brought to Bangkok, where he was confined in an iron cage and displayed publicly until he died.

The destruction was so complete that the word "obliterated" is not hyperbole -- it is what the historical record says. The Siamese divided Lao territories into three administrative regions controlled from Luang Prabang, Nong Khai, and Champasak. They forced mass population transfers that left only a fifth of the original inhabitants on the eastern bank of the Mekong. For decades afterward, the region was devastated by bandits, slave raids, and the Haw wars. It was this vacuum that invited French colonial expansion. Pushing north from Cambodia and Cochinchina along the Mekong, France absorbed Vientiane in 1893 and made it the capital of its Lao protectorate in 1899. The city that the Siamese had burned rose again under a different flag, its ancient temples rebuilt, its memory reshaped by new rulers. The Emerald Buddha, however, never returned.