Kublai, having by 1254 marched north to encounter his first Song forces using elephants, combats them with flaming arrows, but heavy losses have reduced his original one hundred thousand-man army to only twenty thousand soldiers.

William of Rubruck and his companions, upon their arrival of at Karakorum, are received courteously by the Mongols and stay at the Great Khan's camp, where William records the first meeting between European Christians and Buddhists.

The party on July 10, 1254, begins their long journey home.

Hethum, King of Armenia from 1224, has long followed a policy of friendship and alliance with—i.e., submission to—the powerful Mongols.

Hethum himself travels in 1254 through Central Asia to Mongolia to renew the agreement.

He brings many sumptuous presents, and meets with Mongke at Karakorum.

The account of his travels is recorded by a member of his suite, Kirakos Gandzaketsi, as "The Journey of Haithon, King of Little Armenia, To Mongolia and Back".

Copenhagen, today the capital of Denmark, receives its charter as a city under Jakob Erlandsen, the newly appointed Archbishop of Lund, in 1254.

From the Viking Age, there had been a fishing village by the name of "Havn" (harbor) on the eastern shore of the island of Zealand.

From the middle of the twelfth century the site had grown in importance after coming into the possession of the Bishop Absalon, who had fortified it in 1167, the year traditionally marking the foundation of Copenhagen.

The excellent harbor had encouraged Copenhagen's growth until it became an important center of commerce (hence its name—the first part of the word deriving from the Danish term for commerce).

Mindaugas accepts a crown from Pope Innocent IV in 1254; this new status helps him to contain the threat from the German Knights.

Thuringia, named after the Thuringian people who occupied it around 300, had come under Frankish domination in the sixth century, forming a part (from 1130 a landgravate) of the subsequent Holy Roman Empire.

The death of Landgrave Ludwig IV and consequent extinction of the reigning Ludowingian line of counts in 1247 had sparked the seventeen-year War of the Thuringian Succession, in which Ludwig’s daughter Sophia (1224-84), who had married Henry II, Duke of Brabant, wins the western half of the langravate for her son Henry I, called the Child.

At war’s end in 1264, this portion will become independent under the name of Hesse, never to become a part of Thuringia again.

Most of the remaining Thuringian lands will come under the rule of the Wettin dynasty of the nearby Margravate of Meißen, the nucleus of the later duchy and kingdom of Saxony.

The oldest record of Weimar, located on the Ilm River in Thuringia, dates from the year 899.

Ruled by the counts of Weimar-Orlamünde from 1247, it is declared a town in 1254.

(The future capital of the Duchy—after 1815 the Grand Duchy—of Saxe-Weimar, the city will also give its name to the Weimar Republic, the German state between the World Wars of the twentieth century).

Przemysl, together with many Polish bishops and princes, participates on May 8, 1254, at Kraków, in the canonization of Stanislaus of Szczepanów, a Bishop of Kraków known chiefly for having been martyred by Polish King Boleslaw II the Bold in 1079.

The first native Polish saint, Stanislaus is venerated in the Roman Catholic Church as Saint Stanislaus the Martyr (as distinct from Saint Stanislaus Kostka).

The kings of Hungary and Bohemia, whose forces have clashed over control of Austria and Styria, conclude the Treaty of Ofen in 1254, under which Béla IV of Hungary is to rule Styria and …

…Otakar II of Bohemia, Austria.

Bohemond VI marries Sibylla, an Armenian princess, in 1254, ending the power struggle between the two states, although by this point Armenia is the more powerful of the two and Antioch is essentially a vassal state.

Both, however, are soon to be swept up by the conflict between the Mamluks and the Mongols.

John III Vatatzes has made the Nicaean empire economically self-supporting, improved agriculture and stockbreeding, built hospitals and poorhouses, and encouraged the development of Nicaea's cultural life.

He might well have crowned his achievements by retaking Constantinople from the Latin Empire had he not died on November 3, 1254.

His popularity among his subjects and his reputation for goodness will cause him to be canonized a saint of the Eastern Church a half century after his death.

Theodore II Laskaris, who had already been crowned as co-emperor, becomes soles ruler of Nicaea.

At the outset of his reign, he renews the Greek alliance with …