Ok-khun Chamnan - Embassy To France and Rome (1688)

Embassy To France and Rome (1688)

Ok-khun Chamnan was thus a member of a mission of three Siamese mandarins dispatched to Louis XIV in France and Pope Innocent XI in Rome, by the Siamese king Narai in 1688. The two other envoys were Ok-khun Wiset Puban and Ok-muen Pipith Raja. They were followed three days later by three catechists from Tonkin, and five Siamese students sent to study at the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris.

The Siamese mission was accompanied by the Jesuit Father Guy Tachard and the French envoy extraordinary to Siam Simon de la Loubère. They left Siam onboard the Gaillard on January 3, 1688.

After a first visit to Paris, during which they could not meet Louis XIV, they went to Rome. They met with the Pope on December 23, 1688, and again on January 5, 1689, for a farewell audience. Drawings of the Siamese envoys were made by the famous painter Carlo Maratta.

In February 1689, the embassy was granted an audience with Louis XIV, and the treaty of commerce Céberet had obtained in 1687 was ratified. Two weeks later a military treaty was signed, designating François d'Alesso, Marquis d'Eragny, as captain of the palace guard in Ayutthaya and inspector of the French troops in Siam.

The embassy was returned to Siam by the six warship fleet of Abraham Duquesne-Guiton (nephew of the famous Abraham Duquesne) in 1690, but because of unfavourable winds the fleet was only able to go as far as Balassor, at the mouth of the Ganges, where they dropped the embassy. The embassy finally returned to Ayutthaya overland.