1211
Mongols invade the Jin dynasty of north China
Genghis Khan led his horsemen across the Gobi and through the Great Wall, shattering Jin field armies at Yehuling. The steppe riders learned siegecraft from captured Chinese engineers, a lesson that would make their grandchildren unstoppable from Hungary to Hanoi. The invasion unleashed a quarter century of devastation across the North China Plain that reduced its population by nearly half.
Reims cathedral construction begins
On the site where Clovis had once been baptized, masons laid the first stones of a new Gothic cathedral to crown France's kings. The old cathedral had burned. Over the next century sculptors would fill its portals with a parade of stone angels smiling strangely. The famous Smiling Angel of Reims became an icon of Gothic sculpture, embodying a new warmth in medieval devotional art.
Fifth Crusade called by Innocent III
The pope proclaimed a new crusade to retake Jerusalem, preached across Europe by itinerant clergy. Fundraising innovations, including a church tax on clergy, set precedents that would be reused by later popes to squeeze Christendom for money. The crusade would not depart in earnest until 1217, and its failure in the Nile Delta only deepened the growing disillusionment with papal military adventures.
Alfonso II begins the Portuguese Reconquista push
The young king of Portugal launched raids south into the Alentejo and Algarve, seizing castles from the weakening Almohad caliphate. His campaigns laid the groundwork for his son Sancho II to take Elvas and his grandson Afonso III to complete the Portuguese Reconquista within fifty years. The conquered lands were parceled out to military orders whose fortified castles still punctuate the Alentejo landscape.