The Expansion and Contraction of the Royal…

Jayavarman VII now sets about construction of the biggest shrine yet, called the Bayon, inside his own capital city, rebuilt as Angkor Thom.

Taira no Kiyomori had in 1180 ordered the execution of the exiled Minamoto no Yoritomo, whom he had spared in 1160 after killing his father and most of his kinsmen at court following the Taira victory in the Heiji War.

Yoritomo, on receiving this news, had raised the white standard of the Minamoto clan and taken to the field in Kanto, where the Taira military forces had nearly annihilated his small army.

Yoritomo’s depleted ranks are soon replenished, however, with men chafing under the harsh rule of the Taira, and drive the Taira out of Kanto by 1182.

The peasants, refusing to pay Bishop Absalon's tithe, meet at the Skåne Assembly and choose Harald Skreng, one of Canute’s friends, to represent them to the king to plead their case.

The king refuses to hear Skreng out and begins to gather an army to teach the peasants their place, but before he can do so, the nobles of Halland and Skåne cobble together their own army and defeat the peasants in a bloody battle at Dysjebro.

Canute arrives with his army and proceeds to teach the peasants a lesson with fire and sword.

Canute is so relentless that Bishop Absalon begs the king to desist.

Bernhard's vassals in Nordalbingia and the areas between the Elbe and the Baltic Sea had soon rebelled against him and had given their support to Henry the Lion.

Bernhard had tried to assert his claims, thanks to the support of his brothers Otto I of Brandenburg and Siegfried, Archbishop of Bremen.

At first the vassals of Artlenburg had sworn an oath of fidelity.

After them, the counts of Ratzeburg, Danneberg, Luckow and Schwerin had also sworn.

However, the most powerful of these vassals, Count Adolf of Holstein, had not accepted Bernhard's lordship and had become his adversary.

Conflicts break out around Dithmarschen, in western Holstein, but without success for Adolf.

After Adolf's defeat, Lauenburg (Polabenburg) on the lower Elbe, has become the focal point for opposition to Bernhard's rule.

Determined to eliminate the opposition against him in his lands, he levies high taxes on rebellious territories, which lead to an attack against Lauenburg and its destruction in 1182, followed by the restoration of the fortress.

Henry, deserted by his allies, finally has to submit in November 1181 at a Reichstag in Erfurt.

He is exiled from Germany in 1182 for three years.

Leczyca, one of the oldest Polish cities, is the place of the first recorded meeting of Sejm, the Polish parliament, in 1182.

"Sejm" stems from an Old Slavic word meaning "gathering".

Its origin is the King's Councils (wiece), which gain power during the time of Poland's fragmentation.

The Sejm in 1182 in Leczyca is the most notable of these councils, in that for the first time in Poland's history it establishes laws constraining the power of the ruler.

It forbids arbitrary sequestration of supplies in the countryside and takeover of bishopric lands after the death of a bishop.

However, these early Sejms are not a regular event and are formed only at the King's behest.

Friends of the young Alexios II now try to form a party against the empress mother and the prōtosebastos.

Empress Maria’s Latin origins and culture have led to creeping resentment from her Greek subjects (who felt insulted enough by the late Manuel's Western tastes, let alone being ruled by his Western wife), building up to an explosion of rioting that almost becomes a full civil war when Alexios II's half-sister Maria, wife of Caesar John (Renier of Montferrat), stirs up riots in the streets of the capital in early April 1182.

Andronikos Komnenos, having raised an army, is waiting at Chalcedon when anti-Latin riots break out.

Taking advantage of these disorders to aim at the crown, he enters Constantinople, where he is received with almost divine honors, and overthrows the government.

The defection of the commander of the imperial navy, megas doux Andronikos Kontostephanos, and the general Andronikos Angelos, play a key role in allowing the rebellious forces to enter Constantinople.

The unpopular regent is captured and blinded, and Andronikos enters Constantinople posing as the protector of the young emperor Alexios II.

Almost immediately, the celebrations spill over into violence towards the hated Latins, and after entering the city's Latin quarter, a mob begins attacking the inhabitants.

Many had anticipated the events and escape by sea.

The ensuing massacre is indiscriminate: neither women nor children are spared, and Latin patients lying in hospital beds are murdered.

Houses, churches, and charitable institutions are looted.

Latin clergymen receive special attention, and Cardinal John, the papal legate, is beheaded and his head is dragged through the streets at the tail of a dog.

Although Andronikos himself has no particular anti-Latin attitude, he allows the massacre to proceed unchecked.

The bulk of the Latin community, estimated at over sixty thousand at the time, is wiped out or forced to flee.

The Genoese and Pisan communities especially are decimated, and some four thousand survivors are sold as slaves to the Turks.

A few years later, Andronikos I himself will be deposed and handed over to the mob of Constantinople citizenry, and will be tortured and summarily executed in the Hippodrome by Latin soldiers.

The massacre further worsens the image of Constantinople in the West, and although regular trade agreements will soon be resumed between Constantinople and Latin states, the underlying hostility will remain, leading to a spiraling chain of hostilities: a Norman expedition under William II of Sicily in 1185 will sack Thessalonica, the Empire's second largest city, and the German emperors Frederick Barbarossa and Henry VI will both threaten to attack Constantinople.

The worsening relationship will culminate with the brutal sack of the city of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, which will lead to the permanent alienation of Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics.

After allowing Alexios II to be crowned, Andronikos promptly has most of the young emperor's actual or potential defenders executed, including his half-sister, the Caesar, and the dowager empress Maria, whose death warrant her son Alexios is made to sign.

He refuses to allow Alexios the smallest voice in public affairs.

This troubled succession weakens the dynastic continuity and solidarity on which the strength of the empire has come to rely.

All hope of effective cooperation between Constantinople and the Latins vanishes.

Muhammad of Ghur subdues Sindh in 1182.

Raynald has seven galleys freighted over the isthmus of Suez, and launches five of them on the Red Sea: they not only blockade the Muslim port of Eilat (Elath), but also harass shipping, raid other ports, and even threaten Mecca until their eventual destruction by an Egyptian fleet.

The truce arranged in 1180 by Saladin between himself and two Christian leaders, King Baldwin and Raymond III of Tripoli, has held for two years, until Reynald of Châtillon, the lord of the Transjordan fief of Kerak, attacks Muslim caravans passing through his lands.

Resenting this violation of the truce, Saladin immediately assembles his army and prepares to strike.

Saladin leaves Egypt on May 11, 1182, and leads his army north toward Damascus via Aila on the Red Sea.

As he moves north, his army entered lands belonging to the fiefs of Montreal (Shobak) and Kerak.

Saladin encamps at Jerba and launches raids on Montreal, which do great damage to the crops.

At a council of war, the Crusader princes ponder two courses of action.

They could move across the Jordan River to protect the exposed fiefs, but Raymond of Tripoli argues against this strategy, saying that would leave too few soldiers to protect the kingdom.

The aggressive Baldwin overrules Raymond and the Crusader army moves to Petra in the Transjordan, thus defending the lands of his vassal.