Afonso III and the Assertion of Royal…

Kublai releases seventy-five Chinese merchants from captivity after they had been captured along the border of the Mongol Empire and the Southern Song Dynasty.

By this act, Kublai means to increase his reputation among the Chinese, shore up his legitimacy as a just ruler, and to gain more defectors.

Mindaugas, having united the Lithuanians into a cohesive nation with its center in Trakai, has established relative peace and stability, and has used this opportunity to concentrate on expansion to the east, and to establish and organize state institutions.

He has strengthened his influence in Black Ruthenia, in Polatsk, a major center of commerce in the Daugava River basin, and in Pinsk.

He has also negotiated a peace with Galicia-Volhynia, and married his daughter to Svarn, the son of Daniel of Galicia, who is later to become Grand Duke of Lithuania.

Mindaugas has reinforced Lithuanian relationships with western Europe and the Holy See, and has initiated a noble court, an administrative system, and a diplomatic service.

In 1255, Mindaugas had received permission from Pope Alexander IV to crown his son as King of Lithuania.

The Livonian Order has used this period to gain control over Samogitian lands.

However, in 1259, it had lost the Battle of Skuodas, and in 1260 it had lost the Battle of Durbe.

The first defeat encouraged a rebellion by the Semigalians, and the later defeat has spurred the Prussians into an uprising, the Great Prussian Rebellion, which is to last for fourteen years.

Encouraged by these developments and by his nephew Treniota, Mindaugas breaks peace with the order.

Some chronicles hint that he also now relapses into his former pagan beliefs; this has been disputed, but all the diplomatic achievements made after his coronation are lost.

Each Prussian clan chooses a leader as the uprising spreads.

The Sambians are led by Glande, the Natangians by the German-educated Herkus Monte, the Bartians by Diwanus, the Warmians by Glappe, and the Pogesanians by Auktume; the Pomesanians, the westernmost of the Prussian clans, do not joint the uprising.

The uprising is also supported by Skalmantas, leader of the Sudovians.

However, there is no one leader to coordinate efforts of these different forces.

The Prussians besiege the many castles that the Knights have built.

Inferior to the Western Europeans in siege tactics and machinery, the Prussians rely on siege forts, built around the castle, to cut the supplies to the garrisons.

The Teutonic Knights cannot raise large armies to deliver supplies to the starving garrisons and smaller castles begin to fall.

These the Prussians usually destroy, manning just a few captured castles, notably one in Heilsberg, because they lack technology to defend them and organization to provision and supply stationed garrisons.

The first reinforcement to the Teutonic forces arrives in early 1261, but is wiped out on January 21, 1261 by Herkus Monte in the Battle of Pokarwis, near present day Ushakovo.

On August 29, 1261, Jacob of Liège, who had negotiated the Treaty of Christburg after the first uprising, is elected as Pope Urban IV.

Having an inside’s knowledge of events in Prussia, Urban especially favors the Teutonic Knights: in three years of his papacy, he will issue twenty-two papal bulls calling for reinforcements.

However, the reinforcements will be slow to arrive as dukes of Poland and Germany are preoccupied with their own disputes and the Livonian Order is fighting the Semigallian uprising.

The Templars sell Soldin to the Ascanians in 1261, and the town begins to become a center for the Neumark region.

Stephen again assumes control over the government of Transylvania shortly after the Peace of Pressburg, and he and Béla jointly lead their armies against Bulgaria in 1261.

Nevertheless, Béla favors his younger son, Duke Béla and his daughter, Anna, the mother-in-law of the King of Bohemia, making his relationship with his elder son tense.

The two kings (father and son) begin to harass the other's partisans, and their clash appears inevitable.

Finally, the Archbishops Fülöp of Esztergom and Smaragd of Kalocsa undertake to mediate the dispute and the two kings sign an agreement in the summer of 1262 in Pozsony.

Based on the agreement, Stephen V takes over the government of the parts of the Kingdom East of the Danube.

Margaret quarrels with Jakob Erlendsen and her husband's nephew Eric Abelson, as well as with the counts of Holstein.

After a loss in Lohede in 1261, Margaret, together with her son, the young Eric V, are imprisoned by the Count of Holstein.

They soon manage to escape with help from Albert of Brunswick.

The period of Latin rule over Constantinopole, from 1204 to 1261, has been the most disastrous in the city's history.

Even the bronze statues have been melted down for coin; everything of value has been taken, including sacred relics, torn from the sanctuaries and dispatched to religious establishments in Western Europe.

Meanwhile, Lascarid supporters in Asia Minor threaten Michael VIII Palaeologus, despite his military successes, with rebellion.

He succeeds, in the eyes of many Greeks, in legitimating his rule, when Nicaean forces under the command of Alexios Strategopoulos, with the aid of the Genoese, the traditional rivals of Venice, are able to recover Constantinople, almost casually.

Whether as the result of Michael's carefully planned ruse or of accident, or both, the great city falls to his general on July 25, 1261, ending the long-shaky Latin Empire and its sadly diminished domain.

Emperor Baldwin II flees the city, and the Venetians are dispossessed of their lucrative commercial center.

Michael, reiterating his claim to the imperial title, has himself crowned sole emperor in the church of Hagia Sophia in August.

On his entrance in Constantinople, Michael abolishes all Latin customs and reinstates most Greek ceremonies and institutions as they had existed before the Fourth Crusade.

He is acutely aware of the danger posed by the possibility that the Latin West, particularly his neighbors in Italy (Charles I of Sicily, Pope Urban VI, and the Venetians) will unite against him and attempt the restoration of Latin rule here.

John IV, relegated to the background since 1258, is blinded in December and imprisoned in a fortress in Bithynia; spending the remainder of his life as monk, he will die there.

Under the Treaty of Ninfeo, the emperor rewards the Genoese with privileges that challenge the Venetian monopoly of trade and opens up to Genoa the Black Sea markets.

The Palaeologan dynasty is to rule the resuscitated Roman Empire until Constantinople falls permanently to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

The restored Empire of Constantinople begins waging war to take control of Bulgaria in 1261, seizing the Bulgarian ports of Anchialus and …