Rise (1521–1582) Following the
Spoiling of Vijayabahu in 1521, the kingdom of Kotte split into three competing states –
Sitawaka, Raigama, and
Bhuvanekabahu VII's kingdom of Kotte. Of these Sitawaka, under the dynamic leadership of
Mayadunne, posed the greatest threat to the autonomy of the other states. In 1522, the Kandyans secured Portuguese protection against Sitawaka, but any potential for alliance ended in 1546 when Portuguese and Kotte forces invaded the kingdom. Kandy subsequently lent aid to the
Jaffna Kingdom against the Portuguese in 1560.
Under Sitawaka occupation (1582–1592) The Kingdom of Kandy was invaded twice during the 1570s and 1580s—first in 1574 and again in 1581—by
Rajasinghe I of Sitawaka, who had recently ascended the throne. Rajasinghe, already renowned for his decisive victory over the Portuguese at the
Battle of Mulleriyawa, succeeded in annexing Kandy outright. The Kandyan king, Karalliyadde Kumara Bandara (also known as Jayavira III), fled north to the
Jaffna Kingdom with his daughter, Kusumasana Devi (later known as
Dona Catherina of Kandy), and her husband, Yamasinghe Bandara. Both eventually converted to Christianity under Portuguese influence, adopting the names Dona Catherina and Don Philipe respectively. Meanwhile, the Portuguese also pressed their claim to Kandy, citing Dharmapala's
donation of 1580 as a precedent Sitawakan rule over Kandy proved difficult to maintain. Rajasinghe's appointed viceroy, Wirasundara Mudiyanse, rebelled soon after the initial conquest, though his uprising was swiftly suppressed. Another revolt broke out in 1588. Resistance eventually crystallized around Konnappu Bandara, Wirasundara's son, who had fled to Portuguese territory following his father's murder at the hands of Rajasinghe's agents. Between 1591 and 1594, Konnappu Bandara returned, seized the Kandyan throne under the name
Wimaladharmasuriya I, and married Dona Catherina. His victories over both the Sitawakans and the Portuguese—who briefly occupied Kandy in 1592—secured his authority. The strategic situation in Sri Lanka changed dramatically during Wimaladharmasuriya's rise to power. To the north, the Portuguese deposed the king
Puviraja Pandaram of the Jaffna Kingdom in 1591 and installed his son
Ethirimana Cinkam as client king. In 1594, Rajasinghe I died and the kingdom of Sitawaka disintegrated. Kandy remained the sole native polity outside of European dominance. In 1595, Wimaladharmasuriya brought the sacred
Tooth Relic – the traditional symbol of royal and religious authority amongst the
Sinhalese to Kandy, Later that year the
Dutch East India Company despatched
Sebald de Weert to Kandy in an attempt to negotiate a treaty. The visit ended in disaster when the visitors offended their Kandyan hosts with their behaviour and in the ensuing fracas, de Weert and several of his entourage were killed. Vimaladharmasuriya I died in 1604, and the throne passed to his cousin,
Senarat. At the time of the king's death, Senarat was an ordained Buddhist monk, but he disrobed, married Dona Catherina, and assumed the kingship.
Kuruvita Rala, the Prince of
Uva of the
Karava lineage, launched raids against the Kandyan Kingdom and temporarily forced Senarat out of his capital. In 1611, Portuguese forces, acting in the name of the pretender Mayadunne of Uva, captured Kandy and once again set the city ablaze. Further north, in 1619,
Cankili II was deposed and the Jaffna Kingdom absorbed into the Portuguese Empire. Despite these setbacks, Senarat survived as the king and in 1612 had even concluded a treaty with the
Dutch East India Company (VOC). When help came, it was in the form of
Danish East India Company whose fleet arrived in 1620, but failed to secure Trincomalee and was expelled by the Portuguese. Internal instability yet again prevented the Kandyans from securing their acquisitions, and by the time of Senarat's death in 1635 lowland Sri Lanka was once again under Portuguese control. The throne now passed to Senarat's son
Rajasinha II, who led the Kandyans to a major victory over the Portuguese at
Gannoruwa on 28 March 1638. The battle was to be the last major military victory for the kingdom of Kandy and succeeded in severely weakening the Portuguese presence in Sri Lanka. In May of that year he concluded a wide-ranging alliance with the Dutch, who were by now in control of
Batavia. Batticaloa and Trincomalee fell in 1639, Galle in 1640, and Kandyan forces seized Portuguese territories further inland. Relations between the Dutch and the Kandyans had been difficult from the onset and the alliance fell apart in the 1640s. The two sides joined forces again in the 1650s to expel the Portuguese, but a final break occurred in 1656 in the aftermath of the fall of Colombo after a six-month siege and the final expulsion of the Portuguese from Sri Lanka. Rajasinha demanded that the fort be handed over to the Kandyans for demolition; in November, the Dutch refused and drove the king and his army from the vicinity. Rajasinha's hold over his own population was tenuous, and rebellions against him in 1664 and 1671 gave the Dutch the opportunity to seize large parts of Sabaragamuwa in 1665, as well as Kalpitiya, Kottiyar, Batticaloa and Trincomalee. The seizure of the ports was a serious blow to the Kandyan kingdom – not only were Dutch holdings now more or less coterminous with the territory the Portuguese had held, but all Kandyan trade was now in Dutch hands. Rajasinha attempted to negotiate an alliance with
France, who seized Trincomalee but were expelled by the Dutch in 1672. Kandyan campaigns in 1675 and 1684 recaptured some territory, but by the time of Rajasinha's death in 1687 neither city had returned to Kandyan control. Rajasinha's son ascended to the throne as
Vimaladharmasuriya II, and his twenty-year reign (1687–1707) proved relatively peaceable. A trade war broke out in 1701 when the Kandyans closed their borders with Dutch territories in order to stimulate trade through the ports of
Puttalam and Kottiyar. As a result, the Dutch lost control of the
areca nut trade and retaliated; by 1707 Kandyan borders had reopened and both ports were closed. He was crowned
Sri Vijaya Rajasinha later that year. The
Nayak kings were of
Telugu origin who practised
Shaivite Hinduism and were patrons of
Theravada Buddhism. The Nayak rulers played a huge role in reviving Buddhism in the island. They spoke
Tamil, which was also used as the court language in Kandy alongside Sinhala. Relations between the
Sinhalese populace, including the Kandyan aristocracy, and the Nayakkars remained fraught throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries. As early as Narendrasinha's reign, attempts at appointing Nayakkars to prominent positions in court had caused rebellion, including one in 1732 that the king had only been able to crush with Dutch assistance. The Nayakkar nobility – which tended to be exclusivist and monopolise access to the king – was seen as forming an elite group privileged above the native aristocracy, the powerful adigars. Though Sri Vijaya Rajasinha's reign (1739–1747) proved relatively peaceful, his successor
Kirti Sri Rajasinha had to deal with two major rebellions. The first, in 1749, was directed at his father Narenappa; the second, in 1760, was a far more dangerous insurrection which attempted to replace him with a
Siamese prince. Despite these tensions, however, the Nayakkar dynasty endured, establishing support by their patronage of Buddhism and Kandyan culture. Throughout the reigns of
Sri Vijaya Rajasinha and
Kirti Sri Rajasinha the Kandyans launched numerous raids and incursions into Dutch territory, including the annexation of villages in 1741, 1743, and 1745. The
Dutch governors, subservient to
Batavia, were under strict orders to avoid conflict with the kingdom, without ceding any of their privileges, including the monopoly of the
cinnamon trade. In 1761, however, Kirti Sri Rajasinha launched a major invasion of the low country, annexing
Matara and
Hanwella as well as numerous frontier districts. It was to prove to be a disaster; the Dutch re-captured Matara and Hanwella in 1762, seized
Puttalam and
Chilaw in 1763, and then drove inland in a two-pronged invasion. The Kandyans evacuated
Senkadagala, which the Dutch torched; outlying agricultural lands were also ravaged, leaving the kingdom on the brink of starvation by 1764. Kirti Sri Rajasinha requested assistance from the British in 1762 but failed to secure an alliance. By 1765 the Dutch were in a position to force a treaty upon the Kandyans returning not only the border districts but all of Kandy's coastal provinces to the Dutch; henceforth, the kingdom would be effectively cut off from the outside world. Relations between the Dutch and the Kandyans remained peaceable after this until the final expulsion of the former from the island in 1796. Though several British sailors and priests had landed in Sri Lanka as early as the 1590s, the most famous was
Robert Knox who published
An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon based on his experiences during the reign of
Rajasinghe II in 1681. One hundred years later, British involvement in Sri Lankan affairs commenced in earnest with the seizure of Trincomalee by
Admiral Edward Hughes as part of general British-Dutch hostilities during the
American War of Independence. The tumult of the
French Revolution had spread to the Netherlands by 1795, and
Dutch Zeylan sided with the
Batavian Republic during the ensuing conflict. The British rapidly annexed Dutch possessions in Sri Lanka, taking
Trincomalee (which had been returned to the Dutch in 1794) between 28 and 31 August,
Batticaloa on 18 September, and the entirety of
Jaffna on 28 September. Migastenne Disawa, the Kandyan ambassador, negotiated a treaty in
Madras securing the return of much of the eastern coast to the Kandyans in February 1796; by the 15 of that month,
Colombo had fallen and Dutch rule on the island had come to an end.
Kirti Sri Rajasinha died in the midst of these events in January 1796, and was succeeded by his brother
Sri Rajadhi Rajasinha. The new king rejected the terms of Migastenne's treaty, depriving the kingdom of the opportunity to regain the lands it had lost a generation earlier. It proved to be a fateful decision; the British immediately set about organising their new acquisitions, establishing systems of government, education, and justice. With the appointment of
Frederick North (1798–1805) as the first
British governor of Ceylon, any hope of the Kandyans regaining their eastern territories essentially disappeared.
Sri Rajadhi Rajasinha died of illness on 26 July 1798 with no heir. The
English East India Company and the Crown both had control over the island from 1798 until it became the
British crown colony of Ceylon in 1802. Much of the king's reign had been dominated by the powerful First Minister, Pilima Talawe, who now moved to enthrone a young relative of the king, 18-year-old Konnasami as
Sri Vikrama Rajasinha. Muttusami, brother-in-law of the late king, also pressed his claim to the Kandyan throne. Pilima Talawe swiftly suppressed this challenge, arresting Muttusami and his sisters. Though outwardly cooperative with the British, Pilima Talawe proved unable to control Sri Vikrama Rajasinha and secretly coveted the throne himself. Between 1799 and 1801, in a series of meetings with the British at
Avissawella he requested their support in deposing the king. Complex negotiations followed, with proposals ranging from installing Pilima Talawe as viceroy in Kandy while moving the king to British territory, to more direct interventions—yet all such plans were ultimately rejected by both parties. The territories still held by the Dutch on the island were formally ceded to the British under the
Treaty of Amiens in 1802, though the English East India Company continued to exercise a monopoly over the colony's trade. British agents were placed in charge of the lucrative pearl fisheries, as well as monopolies on cotton plantations, salt, and tobacco. In just the first three years of British administration, the government earned £396,000 from the pearl fisheries alone, a revenue that helped offset declining cinnamon prices caused by large Dutch stockpiles in
Amsterdam. Amidst rising tension, matters came to a head when a group of Moorish British subjects were detained and beaten by the agents of Pilima Talawe. British demands for reparations were ignored by the Kandyan court, prompting Governor North to order an invasion of Kandyan territory, thus beginning the
First Kandyan War. On 31 January 1803, a British force led by General Hay Macdowall marched to Kandy and found it evacuated. The British installed Muttusami, but he was not respected by the Kandyans. The occupation quickly unraveled. Surrounded by a hostile population, short of provisions, and ravaged by disease, the British position became untenable. When Macdowall fell ill, command passed to Major Davie. The British abandoned Kandy, leaving their sick behind—who were subsequently executed. As the retreating troops attempted to cross the Mahaweli River, they were decisively defeated by Kandyan forces. Muttusami, along with nearly all the captured British soldiers, was executed; only Davie and three others were spared. The conflict dragged on for two years, becoming the longest and most intense phase of the
Kandyan Wars, as Governor North persisted in sending fresh forces to the frontiers despite repeated setbacks. The British fought their way to Kandy, encountering Kandyan resistance led in part by a
Malay commander known as Sangunglo. Upon their arrival they found the city deserted. Rather than torching it, they installed a puppet king, Muttusami, and left a small garrison in the town before withdrawing. The Kandyans recaptured the city, leaving only one survivor, and harried British forces down to the Mahaveli river, but were routed at Hanwella. The following year another British incursion resulted in a stalemate, and an uneasy truce was in place by 1805. In the following decade, Sri Wickrama Rajasinha's increasingly erratic and capricious rule led to serious unrest amongst the population. A major rebellion in the Seven Korales nearly dethroned him in 1808. The powerful Pilima Talawe rebelled in 1810, was captured, and executed. In 1814, the king ordered
Ehelepola Adigar,
Dissava of Sabaragamuwa, to Kandy. Ehelepola, suspecting a trap, refused; in revenge, the king had his wife and three children executed. Such was the cruelty of the execution that the Kandyan populace, not unused to sights of public execution, now turned en masse against the king. The king was also hugely unpopular amongst the clergy for his sudden and brutal seizures of temple lands. In November 1814, ten British subjects were captured and mutilated in Kandyan territory. Governor
Robert Brownrigg ordered several British forces moved inland from their coastal strongholds in January 1815, accompanied by native forces under Ehelepola.
Molligoda, Ehelepola's successor in Sabaragamuwa and Dissava of the Four Korales, defected to the British in February; Kandy was seized on 14 February, and Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe himself captured on 18 February. Brownrigg also issued a
Sri Lanka Gazette Notification that condemned anyone who participated in the Great Uprising with property confiscation, extradition to
Mauritius, and even execution. (This Gazette Notification labelling the rebels as "traitors" was only revoked two centuries later, in 2017, with 81 leaders of the freedom struggle being formally declared as National Heroes.) Molligoda, however, ensured the road to Kandy remained open and on 30 October Keppetipola was captured. His associate Madugalle Adikaram was captured on 1 November, and thereafter the rebellion collapsed. Both leaders were beheaded on 26 November 1817. Viewing the convention as null and void, the British set about breaking the power of the nobility. Though smaller uprisings occurred in 1820, 1823, and 1824, none of them seriously threatened the British government of the highlands. The area of the central highlands in which the Kandyan kingdom was situated had the natural protection of rivers, waterways, hills and rocky mountainous terrain. The prominent location of the Kandyan kingdom with its cool climate had greatly contributed to protecting the independence of the nation for nearly three centuries. ==Royal Palace Complex==