earth, for there was no one to deliver it from his hands", according to the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle. He crossed the Carpathian Mountains and laid siege to Halych together with his Cuman allies in 1229 or 1230. However, he could not seize the town and withdrew his troops. The Galician–Volhynian Chronicle writes that many Hungarian soldiers "died of many afflictions" on their way home. Béla invaded Bulgaria and besieged Vidin in 1228 or 1232, but he could not capture the fortress. Around the same time, he set up a new border province, the Banate of Szörény (Severin, Romania), in the lands between the Carpathians and the Lower Danube. In a token of his suzerainty in the lands east of the Carpathians, Béla adopted the title "King of Cumania" in 1233. Béla sponsored the mission of Friar Julian and three other Dominican friars who decided to visit the descendants of the Hungarians who had centuries earlier remained in Magna Hungaria, the Hungarians' legendary homeland. His reign Before the Mongol invasion (1235–41) King Andrew died on 21 September 1235. Béla, who succeeded his father without opposition, was crowned king by Robert, Archbishop of Esztergom in Székesfehérvár on 14 October. He dismissed and punished many of his father's closest advisors. For instance, he had Palatine Denis blinded and Julius Kán imprisoned. The former was accused of having, in King Andrew's life, an adulterous liaison with Queen Beatrix, the King's young widow. Béla ordered her imprisonment, but she managed to escape to the Holy Roman Empire, where she gave birth to a posthumous son, Stephen. Béla and his brother Coloman considered her son a bastard. Béla declared that his principal purpose was "the restitution of royal rights" and "the restoration of the situation which existed in the country" in the reign of his grandfather, Béla III. According to the contemporaneous Roger of Torre Maggiore, he even "had the chairs of the barons burned" in order to prevent them from sitting in his presence during the meetings of the royal council. Béla set up special commissions which revised all royal charters of land grants made after 1196. The annulment of former donations alienated many of his subjects from the King. Pope Gregory IX protested strongly at the withdrawal of royal grants made to the Cistercians and the military orders. In exchange for Béla's renouncing of the taking back of royal estates in 1239, the Pope authorized