The Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476 AD, and although the Eastern Roman Empire was also invaded by barbarians and Huns at that time, it did not affect the foundation of its state in general, so it quickly survived the crisis. In the middle of the 6th century AD, during the reign of its great Lord Justinian the Great, the Eastern Roman Empire reached its peak, when they reoccupied most of Italy, southern Spain, and a large number of coastal areas in North Africa. But after entering the 7th century AD, the Eastern Roman Empire entered its centuries-long decline after a series of blows.
The approximate territory of the Heyday of Eastern Rome
The first was in 615 AD, when the Avars, a nomadic group from Asia, invaded the territory of Eastern Rome and soon attacked just a few kilometers from the Eastern Roman capital, Constantinople. Around this time, eastern Rome suffered a series of blows in the war with Sassanid Persia, when Syria and Egypt, the richest provinces of the empire, were occupied by Sassanid Persia. At this time, the Germanic peoples in Western Europe also began to launch a counterattack against Eastern Rome, and a large number of Eastern Roman territories in Italy and Spain were occupied by Visigoths and Lombards.
Around 650 AD, the eastern Roman empire was roughly territorial
In 626, the Avars approached Constantinople and snatched away 200,000 pounds of gold collected by the Eastern Roman Empire from all over the country. Around 630 AD, the Arabs rose rapidly and soon destroyed Sassanid Persia, taking all of North Africa for themselves. In this case, the Eastern Roman Empire realized that it was unlikely to restore its rule outside the Greeks, so it carried out a series of indigenization reforms, the most important of which was to change the Chinese from the Chinese Latin of the Roman Empire to Greek, and the Eastern Roman Emperor no longer used the Roman monarch title "Augustus" and instead used the Greek monarch title "Basilius". It can be said that after this, the Eastern Roman Empire, although the official name of the country still maintained the name of the Roman Empire, that is, the "Roman People and Senate" (SPQR), but in fact it has been transformed into the Greek nation-state. So soon Western Europe no longer saw it as the Roman Empire, but instead referred to it as Byzantium under the old name of Constantinople.
At the same time, the Eastern Roman Empire also carried out a thorough reform of internal affairs, changing the provincial system during the Roman Empire to the State of Saimaa, establishing administrative units under the command of military generals, and the governors of the states were directly appointed by the emperor. These reforms increased cohesion in the Greek region and temporarily stabilized the situation for the Eastern Roman Empire. But at the same time, these measures also invisibly further reduced the appeal of the Eastern Roman Empire outside the Greeks. In 751 AD, Ravenna, the core of Eastern Roman rule in The Italian region, was captured by the Germanic Lombards, and Eastern Rome lost control of the city.
In 867 AD, the Macedonian dynasty established the rough territory of the former Eastern Rome
However, after the 9th century AD, the Eastern Roman Empire once ushered in a ZTE. In 867 AD, the Macedonian dynasty of the Eastern Roman Empire was established. The man who founded the Macedonian dynasty was named Basil, but he was not actually Macedonian, but was born in Armenia outside the territory of Eastern Rome at that time. His entire family was captured in his early years by the neighboring Bulgaria of Eastern Rome, and he was sent to Macedonia as a coolie. Modern research suggests that this Basil was probably not Greek, but Slavic or Armenian.
In 836 AD, he and several companions fled from Macedonia to the Thracian region of Eastern Rome and began to serve some of the Eastern Roman nobles. He started out as a groom and has won wrestling competitions. There are also some records that show that he may have become the male favorite of some nobles because of his handsome appearance. During this period, he gained the trust of the Eastern Roman Emperor Michael III, became the head of the palace guard, and then his status was continuously improved, and finally in 866 AD, he was made the co-emperor and heir of The Co-Emperor by Michael III.
But a year later, Basil felt signs of falling out of favor and staged a coup d'état on the night of September 23, killing Michael III and making himself the sole emperor of Eastern Rome. His dynasty has since been known as the Macedonian Dynasty. And this Mikhail from exile slave to Eastern Roman emperor is indeed very capable. After he came to power in Eastern Rome, he soon established a new State of Saima in the Balkans and emigrated to the local area, strengthening the defense of Eastern Rome.
At the height of the Macedonian dynasty, it was roughly territorial
During his nearly 20 years of rule over Eastern Rome, the Eastern Romans successfully counterattacked the Arabs and Slavs on both the north and the south lines, and reoccupied parts of italy. Generations of his descendants continued to expand their territory for Eastern Rome, occupying armenia, southern Italy, the Balkans, Crete, Cyprus, Lebanon and even parts of Iraq, and destroying the First Bulgarian Empire in 1018, bringing the Eastern Roman Empire into its final golden age.
But after the death of the Eastern Roman Emperor Basil II in 1025 AD, the Eastern Roman royal family was in chaos for the right to inherit power. In the 30 years that followed, Eastern Rome had ten monarchs, and its power declined significantly. In 1054 AD, there was also a rupture between Eastern Rome and the Holy See, creating a division between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Two years later, the Eastern Roman Empress Theodora died without a queen, and the Macedonian dynasty collapsed. After that, the Eastern Romans soon began a process of further decline and even extinction.
The route of the advance of both sides before the Battle of Manzikert
In 1037 AD, the Seljuk Turks from the east established the Seljuk Empire in the Khorasan region of eastern Iran, and soon expanded to the west. On August 26, 1071, a great battle broke out between the Seljuks and the Eastern Roman armies in Manzikert, in present-day eastern Turkey. The Eastern Roman army mobilized about 40,000 to 70,000 men, and the Seljuk army had between 20,000 and 30,000 men. Although the Eastern Roman army was superior in numbers, the Eastern Roman army was infighting twice. First, the Eurasian nomadic Cuman cavalry it employed defected on the battlefield to the Seljuk army. Later, when the Eastern Roman Emperor Romanus led the main force to attack the Seljuk army, The general Indronica, who commanded the rear guard of the Eastern Roman Army, declared that Romanus was dead and led his army to retreat to the capital to compete for the throne. As a result, the Eastern Roman army collapsed in an instant, and Romanus IV was captured.
In the 10 years that followed, the Eastern Roman Empire broke out into 8 civil wars, which also caused the territory of Eastern Rome to shrink rapidly, and its territory in Italy was lost, and its territory in the Balkans was greatly reduced. A large part of the territory of Anatolia (in present-day Turkey) was also taken away by the Seljuk Empire. During this period, the Saima state system, which played an important role in the rise of the Eastern Roman Empire, also gradually declined, and the gap in the eastern Roman Empire's military resources became larger and larger. Forced to rely more and more on foreign mercenaries to fight.
The territory of Eastern Rome before the Crusades
In this case, Eastern Rome had to begin seeking foreign aid. In 1095 AD, Eastern Rome sent emissaries to Italy to seek the help of the Holy See. Although the Holy See promised to help, it only mobilized some civilians to form a civilian crusade to help Eastern Rome. But this army was not much different from the bandits, and when they arrived in the territory of Eastern Rome, they not only did not help much, but also carried out crazy plundering of the Balkans, making the situation in Eastern Rome worse. However, when this civilian crusader army actually engaged the Seljuk army, it was immediately destroyed and was quickly annihilated.
Later, although the Crusades officially sent by the Holy See soon launched the First Crusade and succeeded, the Eastern Romans did not get much return from them, and their decline was not delayed. In 1176 AD, during the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Manuel I, a large army was once again assembled in the hope of capturing its capital Konya from the Sultanate of Roma, which then occupied the central region of Turkey, but his army was ambushed by the Roma army in a valley and was defeated. After this, the Eastern Romans completely lost the power to compete for Anatolia, and at the same time completely lost the prestige that the Eastern Romans had established internationally in the past.
Less than 30 years later, in 1204 AD, the Fourth Crusade, initiated by Pope Enoch-Jasper IV, brought ruin to Eastern Rome by the intervention of an Eastern Roman prince. At that time, the Eastern Roman prince Alexius IV asked the Crusaders to attack Eastern Rome and help his father regain the throne, and promised to give the Crusaders 200,000 silver marks after the event was completed. At that time, the Crusaders were also in short supply, so they agreed to the deal. As a result, the Crusaders captured Constantinople in April 1204, after which they were to be looted and slaughtered, robbing a total of 900,000 silver marks from Constantinople.
The situation in the homeland of Eastern Rome after the first destruction of the country
In the process, Alexius IV and his father, who had brought the Crusaders, died, and the Crusaders took advantage of the fact that they established a state in their eastern Roman homeland called the Latin Empire. Therefore, it can be said that by this time, the Eastern Roman Empire has basically perished. However, some remnants of the Eastern Roman Empire fled to Asia Minor in present-day Turkey and established several small kingdoms there, including Nicaea, Trebizon, and Epirus. The Empire of Nicaea, after 57 years of dormancy, finally took revenge, destroying the Latin Empire and rebuilding the Eastern Roman Empire. This process ultimately resulted in both the Eastern Romans and the Crusaders. Eastern Rome was severely injured after the pain of annihilation and became a small country with extremely limited strength. However, in the process of restoration, Eastern Rome consumed a lot of human and financial resources of the Crusaders, which also greatly affected the strength of the Crusaders, and also played a certain role in the final complete defeat of the Crusaders in 1291 AD.
After the restoration of eastern Rome, the territory was roughly
By the 13th century AD, the rebuilt Eastern Roman state had become extremely weak. At one point, the total strength of its army was only 6,000 people. In this case, the Eastern Roman Empire, in order to protect itself, even established the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanates in Eastern Europe and West Asia after several western expeditions with the Mongols in the second half of the 13th century AD in exchange for its military protection. At that time, these two khanates did send troops several times to help The Eastern Romans repel the attacks of Neighboring Regimes such as Bulgaria.
The last Eastern Rome around 1440 AD
In 1299 AD, the Ottoman Empire was established. Over the next 50 years, the Ottomans completely seized The Eastern Roman possessions in Asia Minor. In 1380, the Thracian region of Eastern Rome was also taken by the Ottomans. Eastern Rome gradually became a confederation of city-states that controlled only the periphery of Constantinople and some of the Aegean islands. In 1402 AD, the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I had gathered a large army to prepare for the destruction of the Eastern Roman Empire, but did not expect to go halfway to bite the gold, the Ottoman Empire was suddenly invaded by Timur, the "conqueror of the world" from Central Asia, in the spring of that year, Bayezid I hurriedly returned to the division, but was defeated and captured by Timur at the Battle of Ankara. After that, the Ottoman Empire fell into years of civil strife, leaving Eastern Rome alive for decades. However, after the Ottomans finally recovered, the Eastern Romans could not escape their fate and were finally destroyed by the Ottoman army on May 30, 1453. (Image from the Internet, infringement notice deleted)