The Eastern Roman Empire (known as Byzantium, or the Byzantine Empire) had been in decline for at least three centuries before the final blow of Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror destroyed it on the dreadful Tuesday of 29 May 1453. Intrigue and various civil wars contributed to the further demise of the Christian Empire even following the two devastating blows that occurred in 1071 and 1204 respectively. In 1071, the Seljuk Turks invaded Anatolia and defeated the armies of Christian Emperor Romanus Diogenes, who had been betrayed by his Generals. Such lack of unity and vision on the part of the Greeks would be repeated again in 1920 when another great man who sought to restore the nation to its past glory would likewise be undermined.
The second devastating blow occurred in 1204 when the Knights of the Fourth Crusade conquered Constantinople, massacred its population, and desecrated its Churches in unspeakable ways. The fifty seven year occupation of Constantinople by the Crusaders destroyed the Empire politically and economically.
The Turkish invasion of Anatolia had been a sequel to the original Islamic invasion of the Byzantine Empire between 632 AD and 641 AD when Egypt, Syria, and Palestine were forever lost to Christendom and subject to the process of Islamicization. The Emperor Heraclius (610-641) who had lost these territories had once been a great and noble man. This former African General was brought to power in Constantinople and in time restored what had been a declining Empire. Having lost Jerusalem to the Persians, and with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre having been desecrated, the Emperor's task was to liberate the Holy Land.
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