The Decline and Fall of the Eastern Roman Empire: From the Time of the Fourth Crusade to the Capture of Constantinople

First published in 1903 under the title "The Destruction of the Greek Empire and the Story of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks," this book dramatically tells the story of the 250 years preceding the fall of Constantinople and the destruction of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks.

Drawing upon original sources and classical historians, this book describes in detail the political confluence of circumstances that led to the isolation of the city of Constantinople from Western Christianity, and the steady impoverishment of the once magnificent capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.

At the same time, the ancient city, founded and named after the Roman Emperor Constantine, became increasingly threatened by the expansion of Islam and that religion's conquering of almost all of the previous territory of the Eastern Roman Empire. Finally, the Byzantine Empire was reduced to an area protected only by the 1000-year-old city walls of Constantinople. Behind these walls, the last Roman Emperor and his small band of Christian knights awaited the inevitable end.

The shocking and now often ignored pivotal event of the seizure of Constantinople and its conversion into the present-day city of Istanbul is covered in full, along with its after-effects and the creation of an anti- Ottoman alliance in Europe.

This new edition contains all the original maps and images and contains a new index.