limited number of forces available to him in the second half of 1767. Still, the recalcitrant Burmese king tried to hold on to all his gains. To reinforce the Chinese front, he recalled from Siam a major portion of the army, which arrived back to Ava with the Siamese captives in July 1767. As it turned out, the remaining Burmese forces in Siam, which could not have been more than 10,000 at most, were too scattered among many garrisons, and too small to hold the conquered kingdom together. Indeed, the Burmese had little control outside their garrisons, and no control over the Siamese countryside where gangs of bandits roamed. As it soon proved, Hsinbyushin's two-front policy was utterly unsustainable, and would nearly cost Burmese sovereignty. With the majority of Shan levies not available, the entire Burmese defenses only had about 20,000 men at the start of the third Chinese invasion in November 1767. Hsinbyushin apparently thought the size of his defenses was adequate for a similar size Chinese force of the second invasion. But the next Chinese invasion proved to be the largest yet—50,000 strong, and caught the Burmese command by surprise. The Chinese, led by their elite Manchu Bannermen, quickly overran outnumbered Burmese defenses and barreled down towards Ava, and by December, Hsinbyushin was finally forced to recall all his remaining troops from Siam. He sent them directly to the front in Shan states where the Burmese were conducting a guerrilla warfare against Chinese supply lines. (The main Chinese force ultimately reached just north of Ava by February 1768. Hsinbyushin was down to the last 12,000 men to defend his capital.) Bolstered by the returning troops from Siam, the Burmese defenses recovered. The Chinese forces were driven back with heavy losses in March 1768. After the close-call, Hsinbyushin kept almost all his troops on the Chinese front. Better prepared, the Burmese forces defeated the next Chinese invasion at the end of 1769 at the border. Commanders from both sides signed an uneasy truce, which was not accepted by either government. The Chinese kept a heavy military lineup in the border areas of Yunnan for about a decade in an attempt to wage another war while imposing a ban on inter-border trade for twenty years. In the following years, Hsinbyushin was forced to keep his defenses strong along the Chinese border and could not renew his Siamese adventures. In the