Hanthawaddy forces, aided by the French East India Company-supplied firearms and Dutch and Portuguese mercenaries, have reached the gates of Ava by early 1752.

The heir-apparent of Hanthawaddy, Upayaza, summons all administrative officers in Upper Burma to submit.

Some chose to cooperate, but others, like Aung Zeya, choose to resist.

Aung Zeya persuades forty-six villages in the Mu Valley to join him in resistance.

On February 29,1752 (the Full moon of Tabaung 1113 ME), as the Hanthawaddy forces are about to breach the outer walls of Ava, Aung Zeya proclaims himself king with the royal style of Alaungpaya ("One Who Is the Future Buddha", Maitreya), and founds the Konbaung Dynasty.

His full royal style is Thiri Pawara Wizaya Nanda Zahta Maha Dhamma Yazadiyaza Alaung Mintayagy.

After Ava fell on March 23, 1752, Alaungpaya's own father, Nyo San, urges him to submit.

He points out that although Alaungpaya has scores of enthusiastic men, they have only a few muskets, and that their little stockade does not stand a chance against a well-equipped Hanthawaddy army that has just sacked a heavily fortified Ava.

Alaungpaya, undeterred, prepares the defenses by stockading his village, now renamed Shwebo, and building a moat around it.

He had the jungle outside the stockade cleared, the ponds destroyed and the wells filled.

Konbaung is only one among many other resistance forces that had independently sprung up across a panicked Upper Burma.

Fortunately for the resistance forces, the Hanthawaddy command had mistakenly equated their capture of Ava with the victory over Upper Burma, and had withdrawn two-thirds of the invasion force back to Bago, leaving just a third (less than ten thousand men) for what they consider a mop-up operation.

At first, the strategy seems to work. Hanthawaddy forces established outposts as far north as present day northern Sagaing Region and ...

...found allies in the Gwe Shan people of Madaya in present-day northern Mandalay Region.