The king fled in the middle of the night. Amangkurat I, ruler of the Mataram Sultanate, was too sick to walk and had to be carried in a palanquin through the darkness, away from the capital he had spent three decades expanding. Behind him, rebel forces poured into Plered, setting fire to the royal compound and hauling off a treasury worth at least 300,000 Spanish reals. It was late June 1677, and the most powerful kingdom on Java was collapsing -- not from the strength of its enemies alone, but from the fractures within the royal family itself. Four princes who should have defended the capital spent their energy maneuvering against each other. The rebellion that breached the walls was almost beside the point.
The Trunajaya rebellion began modestly in 1674 as a series of raids against Mataram's coastal cities. By 1676, it had become an invasion. A rebel army of 9,000 crossed from Madura to Java and routed a much larger royal force at the Battle of Gegodog in the northeast. Java's entire northern coast fell in quick succession, and the rebels pushed into the interior. Trunajaya's momentum drew allies. His father-in-law, Raden Kajoran, head of a powerful family near modern-day Magelang, joined the cause -- alarmed not by ideology but by Amangkurat I's reputation for brutality, which had claimed the lives of many noblemen at court. Even the king's own cousin, Pangeran Purbaya, defected with his followers. The Dutch East India Company, sensing an opportunity, allied with Mataram early in 1677, and a fleet under Cornelis Speelman took Trunajaya's base at Surabaya in May. But the rebels simply relocated their capital inland to Kediri and turned toward Plered.
Plered had been the seat of Mataram since 1647, when the young Amangkurat I built his royal compound near an artificial lake constructed by his father, Sultan Agung. Unlike the older wooden court at Karta, Plered was built of brick -- a material meant to last. The king continued expanding it for nearly two decades, until 1666. By March 1677, however, the VOC envoy Jacob Couper reported what anyone at court could see: Amangkurat's rule was visibly collapsing. The king was gravely ill. His four eldest sons -- the crown prince, Pangeran Puger, Pangeran Martasana, and Pangeran Singasari -- commanded guards capable of mounting a real defense, but they were too busy competing for the succession to coordinate one. The capital had soldiers. What it lacked was unity.
Kajoran renewed operations in the capital district in April 1677. By June, the combined rebel forces -- Madurese troops, Javanese fighters from the eastern provinces, and the men of Kajoran and Purbaya -- engaged the royal princes in heavy fighting. The princes lost. Pangeran Purbaya's defection to the rebel side demoralized the remaining loyalists, and the capital was, as accounts put it, "beyond defending." In the final days, the king appointed Puger as Susuhunan Ingalaga -- "king on the field of battle" -- an impressive title attached to an impossible task. Then, amid anarchy and panic, Amangkurat slipped away in the night with a small retinue. Rebel forces entered soon after. They sacked the royal compound and the absent princes' residences, setting fires that lit up the Javanese plain. The treasury -- centuries of accumulated wealth -- was carted off to Kediri.
The royal family scattered. The king encountered two of his sons during the flight; Puger and Singasari refused to accompany him. The crown prince did. Together they traveled northwest through Bagelen, across the mountains of Banyumas, and north toward Tegal on the coast. According to Javanese accounts, villagers in Karanganyar attempted to rob the royal party, not recognizing the dying king in his palanquin. Amangkurat chose Tegal deliberately. It was his mother's country, and he was certain he would die. He sent officials ahead to build a grave at Tegalwangi, a few kilometers inland from the coast. As he lay dying, he ceremonially handed the royal regalia to the crown prince and instructed him to recapture the court with Dutch help. He was buried on 13 July 1677. Thirteen VOC soldiers from a ship anchored off Tegal attended the funeral. His posthumous name became Seda-ing-Tegalwangi: He who died in Tegalwangi.
The new king, Amangkurat II, inherited a title and nothing else -- no court, no army, no treasury. He sailed to Jepara to meet Cornelis Speelman and renewed the Mataram-VOC alliance, trading money and geopolitical concessions for military support. His brother Puger, meanwhile, returned to Plered after the rebels moved on and declared himself the rightful king, sparking a dynastic rivalry that would not end until 1681. The Trunajaya rebellion itself dragged on until 1680. Unable to wrest Plered from Puger, Amangkurat II abandoned his father's brick capital entirely and built a new one in the district of Pajang. He called it Kartasura. The ruins of Plered, the palace that was meant to endure, settled into the Javanese landscape alongside the older ruins of Karta -- two capitals of two kings, both left behind.
Located at 7.86S, 110.41E in the Special Region of Yogyakarta, Central Java. The site of Plered lies east of modern Yogyakarta, in the lowlands south of Mount Merapi (2,930 m). The Prambanan temple complex is visible approximately 12 km to the northeast. Nearest airport: WAHH (Adisucipto International Airport), roughly 10 km to the northeast. Kartasura, the successor capital built by Amangkurat II, is approximately 50 km to the east-northeast near Solo.