Su Shi has often been often at odds with the political faction headed by Wang Anshi.

He had once written a poem criticizing Wang Anshi's reforms, especially the government monopoly imposed on the salt industry.

The dominance of the reformist faction at court had allowed the New Policy Group greater ability to have Su Shi exiled for political crimes.

The claim was that Su was criticizing the emperor, when in fact Su Shi's poetry was aimed at criticizing Wang's reforms.

It should be said that Wang Anshi played no part in this action against Su, for he had retired from public life in 1076 and established a cordial relationship with Su Shi.

Su Shi's first remote trip of exile (1080–1086) is to Huangzhou, Hubei.

This post carries a nominal title, but no stipend, leaving Su in poverty.

During this period, he begins Buddhist meditation.

With help from a friend, Su builds a small residence on a parcel of land in 1081.

Su Shi lives at a farm called Dongpo ('Eastern Slope'), from which he takes his literary pseudonym.

While banished to Hubei province, he grows fond of the area he lives in; many of the poems considered his best are written in this period.

His most famous piece of calligraphy, Han Shi Tie, is also written here.

Shen Kuo had been entrusted as a military officer in defense of Yanzhou (modern-day Yan'an, Shaanxi province) a few years after Song Dynasty military forces made territorial gains against the Tanguts of the Western Xia.

During the autumn months of 1081, Shen is successful in defending Song Dynasty territory while capturing several fortified towns of the Western Xia.

Leopold the Fair, having at first sided with Emperor Henry IV in the Investiture Controversy, switches sides in 1081 at the Diet of Tulln under the influence of his wife Ida and Bishop Altmann of Passau.

Born in 1050 as the son of Ernest and Adelaide of Eilenburg, the daughter of Dedi I, Margrave of the Saxon Ostmark, had inherited the Margravate of Austria on his father’s death in 1075, he resides in Gars am Kamp.

He is subsequently deposed by the Emperor, who gives the fief to Vratislaus II of Bohemia, who raises an army to serve in Henry's Italian campaign of 1081.

Quraysh ("'Alam al-Din", who has ruled Mosul since 1052, has acknowledged the supremacy of the Seljuqs, although had at one point come into conflict with them and was temporarily expelled from Mosul.

He had accompanied the Turk Basasiri when the latter took Baghdad at the end of 1058, but the Seljuqs had retaken the city in the next year.

Quraysh, who died in 1061, had been followed by his son Muslim ("Sharaf al-Dawla").

Sharaf al-Dawla is a just ruler; the 'Uqaylid domains will remain relatively stable for most of his reign.

He has been able to bring the 'Uqaylid dynasty to the height of its power.

By allying himself with the Seljuq sultans Alp-Arslan and Malik-Shah, Muslim has annexed part of northern Syria and thus established 'Uqaylid rule over an area reaching from Aleppo to Baghdad.

The Seljuq armies, under Nizam's guidance, have contained the Ghaznavids in Khorasan, rolled back the Fatimids in Syria, defeated the Seljuq pretenders to the throne, invaded Georgia and reduced it to a tributary state, compelled the submission of regional governors, and kept the Abassid Caliphs in a position of impotence.

Venetian doge Domenico Selvo, like his predecessor Domenico Contarini (1043-70) has remained neutral in the conflict between papacy and empire (despite the complaints of Pope Gregory VII), while safeguarding Venetian economic interests in the Adriatic when the conflict had begun to be reflected on the Dalmatian coast.

However, the greatest danger to Venetian interests is the Norman expansion under Robert Guiscard, which threatens to cut Venetian communications to the south.

Guiscard, in his final enterprise, mounts an attack on the Empire, taking up the cause of Michael VII, who had been deposed in 1078 and to whose son Guiscard's daughter had been betrothed.

Guiscard's great fleet, with probable papal backing, sails against the empire in May 1081 with sixteen thousand men, including thirteen hundred Norman knights, supported by a large body of Saracens, some dubious Greeks and a well-drilled army of several thousand heterogeneous foot soldiers.

The German prices put forward a new claimant, Hermann of Luxembourg, in August 1081, but his personality is not suitable for a leader of the Gregorian party in Germany, and the power of Henry IV is at its peak.

The king, now more experienced, takes up the struggle with great vigor.

He refuses to acknowledge the ban on the ground of its illegality.

A Waiblingen council had been summoned at Brixen, and on June 16 it pronounces Gregory (whom Henry has dubbed "The False Monk") deposed.

On June 25, it nominates the archbishop Guibert of Ravenna as his successor, declaring him Clement III.

Guibert, of noble birth, had served at the German court in the mid-1050s and become imperial chancellor for Italy from 1058 to 1063.

As such, he had supported the election of Bishop Peter Cadalus of Parma as antipope Honorius II in 1061.

His appointment by Henry IV of Germany as archbishop of Ravenna had been confirmed by Pope Alexander II, but he later clashed with Gregory VII.

When Guibert becomes the Italian leader of the imperialist faction opposing the Gregorian reform, Gregory had excommunicated him.

Henry opens the conflict against Gregory in Italy in 1081.

The latter has now become less powerful, and thirteen cardinals desert him.

Henry enters Pavia and is crowned as King of Italy, receiving the Iron Crown of Lombardy.

He assigns a series of privileges to the Italian cities who have supported him, marches against the hated Matilda of Tuscany, declaring her deposed for lese majesty, and confiscates her possessions.

Henry next moves to Rome, which he besieges first in 1081: he is compelled to retire to …