Keen Lung was engaged in many more wars than those in Central Asia. On the side of Burmah he found his borders disturbed by nomad and predatory tribes not less than in the region of Gobi. These clans had long been a source of annoyance and anxiety to the viceroy of Yunnan, but the weakness of the courts of Ava and Pegu, who stood behind these frontagers, had prevented the local grievance becoming a national danger. But the triumph of the remarkable Alompra, who united Pegu and Burmah into a single state, and who controlled an army with which he effected many triumphs, showed that this state of things might not always continue, and that the day would come when China might be exposed to a grave peril from this side. The successors of Alompra inherited his pretensions if not his ability, and when the Chinese called upon them to keep the borders in better order or to punish some evildoers, they sent back a haughty and unsatisfactory reply. Sembuen, the grandson of Alompra, was king when Keen Lung ordered, in the year 1768, his generals to invade Burmah, and the conduct of the war was intrusted to an officer in high favor at court, named Count Alikouen, instead of to Fouta, the hero of the Central Asian war, who had fallen under the emperor's grave displeasure for what, after all, appears to have been a trifling offense. The course of the campaign is difficult to follow, for both the Chinese and the Burmese claim the same battles as victories, but this will not surprise those who remember that the Burmese court chroniclers described all the encounters with the English forces in the wars of 1829 and 1853 as having been victorious. The advance of the Chinese army, estimated to exceed 200,000 men, from Bhamo to Ava shows clearly enough the true course of the war, and that the Chinese were able to carry all before them up to the gates of the capital. Count Alikouen did not display any striking military capacity, but by retaining possession of the country above Ava for three years he at last compelled the Burmese to sue for peace on humiliating terms.