History / Golden Horn / Emperors / Religion / Art In more than 11 centuries of existence Byzantium rarely enjoyed one whole year of peace. Civil war broke out almost immediately after ConstantineI's death in 337 A.D. and the empire was assailed in turn by Goths, Huns, Persians, Avars, Bulgars, Slavs, Vikings, Arabs, Berbers, Turks, Crusaders and Normans. The boundaries of Byzantium expanded and contracted continually. Sometimes when Byzantium could not beat off attacks it bought peace. In 447 an earthquake outside Constantinople frightened Attila the Hun, poised with his hordes not far to the west, into accepting a bribe of nearly 3 tons of gold bars in return for moving off with his blood-hungry warriors. The last years of Heraclius (610-41) coincided with the beginnings of great Arab invasions of Byzantine territory in the Near East and round the Mediterranean. In 636 the Arabs won Syria, in 638 Palestine, in 641Persia and Egypt. The Muslim invaders were unable to capture Constantinople either by land or by sea, especially after 650 A.D. when Byzantines were armed with their invincible secret weapon, "Greek fire". But, when Heraclius died the Byzantine Empire had contracted to Asia Minor, Greece, parts of North Africa, Sicily and Sout Italy. By the end of the next century Spain, Africa and most of Italy were lost, never to be regained. Thus it remained for 200 years, smaller than ever before, continuosly threatened by Arabs, Slavs, Bulgars and others. The next 200 years, after Basil death, brought a steady decline in Byzantium's fortunes. In the east the empire was under constant attack by the Seljuk Turks from Central Asia, who in 1071 defeated the Byzantines at Manzikert in eastern Anatolia and overran the highlands of Asia Minor. At the same time, in the west, Byzantium lost S. Italy and Sicily to the Normans invaders. For help against Turks and Normans the Byzantines turned to Venice; in return for assistance , the Venetians demanded and got trading rights throughout the Byzantine Empire, so weakening Byzantium's long monopoly and her financial resources. By the beginning of the 13th century the empire had shrunk to a little more than what is now Greece and the western half of Turkey. It was now to endure the supreme tragedy - the invasion of its capital in 1204 by western European armies which had originally set out on the Fourth Crusade for the Holy Land. The predominant motive for this attack by Christians agains Christians was greed. The Crusaders, short of money, sought ships from Venice, Byzantium's long-standing trading rival. Despite its decline, Byzantium was still far richer than Palestine or Syria, the Crusaders original goals. Consequently French and Venetian ships, having rounded the south of Greece, turned north-eastwards, sailed up the Dardanelles, and attacked Constantinople. They broke into the city and took possession of it. The emperor Alexius V fled and was later killed in Greece. Countless treasures were stolen, and apportioned to the troops according to their rank. The attack was a devastating blow to Byzantium, and one from which it did not recover. The Crusaders attack split the ranks of Christian europe, and highlighted the growing indifference of the West to the civilization that had preserved the Christian faith and the ancient classical heritage. This indifference was to be directly responsible for the final fall of Constantinople in 1453. "A monstrous head without a body" is how Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet II, described what was left of the Byzantine Empire in 1452. A huge city once containing over a million people had shrunk to only 60,000. Byzantium had become irrelevant, and Mehmet was determined to end it. After six weeks of siege, on the 29th of May in 1453 - 6,961 years after the creation of the world, by Byzantine reckoning; 1,123 years and 18 days after Constantine the Great dedicated his new Christian Rome on the Bosporus - Constantinople fell to the Turks. Back to History Back to Learning Categories > History History / Golden Horn / Emperors / Religion / Art