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Events

Politics and world affairs

Mongolian storm

Earlier this year: After the Mongol invasion of the Rus was completed last year with the conquest of Kiev, the Mongol storm on Central Europe takes place with an army of the Golden Horde under Batu Khan: The cities of Sandomierz and Krakow are conquered and destroyed. The Mongols also invaded Transylvania and destroyed Hermannstadt.
March 18: In a battle at Chmielnik, Polish knights are defeated by the westward-moving Golden Horde of Turko-Mongolian Tatars. The city, which is mentioned for the first time on this occasion, is then plundered and destroyed.

9 April: In the Battle of Liegnitz (Battle of Wahlstatt), a German-Polish army of knights (enhanced by Knights of the Order) is destroyed by the Mongols under Orda Khan. A Bohemian army of King Wenceslas I, only a day’s ride away, arrives too late. The leader of the European army, Duke Henry the Pious of Silesia, falls in battle. After a futile attempt to conquer Liegnitz, Baidar Khan stops the march west and instead moves his troops south to the main Mongolian power in Hungary.

11 April: In the Battle of Muhi, the Mongols under Batu Khan also defeat the army of the Hungarian King Béla IV. Few Hungarians can escape, including King Bela. First he flees via northern Hungary and Pressburg to the enemy Duke Frederick II. from Austria, which takes away the treasury carried by him and forces him to cede three border counties. Then he flees to Dalmatia.
Following the Battle of Muhi, the Mongols plunder the city of Spalato and threaten Trieste. As a result, they cross the frozen Danube, plunder the Hungarian capital Buda, devastate Transdanubia and advance to Wiener Neustadt.
24 June: The Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Assen II. He died after defeating the Mongols. His underage son Kaliman I. Assen has nothing to do with the Mongol storm that will break over the Second Bulgarian Empire the following year.
11 December: The Mongols withdraw from Europe because of the succession of the late Great Khan Ugedai.

Crusades

April 23: The crusade of the barons under Richard of Cornwall confirms the treaty negotiated last year with the Ayyubid Sultan as-Salih Ayyub and thus achieves by diplomatic means the cession of Galilee and the territories west of the Jordan to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. This is the biggest terrain gain of the Crusaders since the First Crusade. Richard is still waiting for the release of the last prisoners from the Battle of Gaza in 1239 and leaves on the 3rd. May with the majority of the Crusaders from Akkon on their journey home to England. He leaves the Kingdom of Jerusalem in its greatest territorial extension since 1187, but internally vouches for it