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The Golden Horde led by Batu Khan advances beginning in January from Erzurum to Sivas, sacks that city without mercy, and wipes out Seljuk Turkish forces June 26 (see 1241). The sultan and his mother flee for their lives.
Hostilities between France and England end in a truce that will continue for 5 years.
Venice forces Hungary's Béla IV to cede Zadar but he retains Split and other Dalmatian provinces.
Castilian forces take possession of Murcia almost without resistance but leave the Iberian Peninsula country's autonomous administrative system intact (see 1144).
Crusaders in southwestern France lay siege to Montsegur Castle, last stronghold of the Cathar "heretics" (see 1234). The castle's noblewomen make an arrangement with the bishop to give them the consolamentum in the event that they are wounded and cannot speak, they fight alongside the men, the bishop makes good on his promise as their situation becomes hopeless, and while the castle's military defenders are permitted to withdraw unharmed some 200 male and female Cathars are burned on a pyre (see 1244).
The vacancy in the papal throne ends with the election June 25 of the Genoa-born Sinibaldo Fieschi, 43, who will reign until 1254 as Innocent IV. Sinibaldo's father, Ugo, has been the first member of the family to assume the name Fieschi; allied initially with Sicily's Angevin kings, the family will later support the kings of France, and it will produce another pope, to say nothing of 72 cardinals and a great number of admirals, ambassadors, and generals as it works with the papal (Guelph) party in affairs of state.
Famine sweeps the German states, whose towns are infested like most in Europe by black rats that have come westward with the Mongols (see Black Death, 1340).
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