re: Fall of USA vs the Fall of Rome

Are We The Byzantines? by Victor Davis Hanson

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When Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, the Byzantine Empire and its capital had survived for 1,000 years beyond the fall of the Western Empire at Rome.

Always outnumbered in a sea of enemies, the Byzantines’ survival had depended on its realist diplomacy of dividing its enemies, avoiding military quagmires, and ensuring constant deterrence.

Generations of self-sacrifice ensured ample investment for infrastructure. Each generation inherited and improved on singular aqueducts and cisterns, sewer systems, and the most complex and formidable city fortifications in the world.

Brilliant scientific advancement and engineering gave the empire advantages like swift galleys and flame throwers—an ancient precursor to napalm.

The law reigned supreme for nearly a millennium after the emperor Justinian codified a prior thousand years of Roman jurisprudence.

Yet this millennium-old crown jewel of the ancient world that once was home to 800,000 citizens had only 50,000 inhabitants left when it fell.

There were only 7,000 defenders on the walls to hold back a huge Turkish army of over 150,000 attackers.

The Islamic winners took over the once magical city of Constantine and renamed it Istanbul. It had been the home of the renowned Santa Sophia, the largest Christian church in the world for over 900 years. Almost immediately, this “Church of the Holy Wisdom” was converted into the then largest mosque in the Islamic world, with minarets to follow.

So what happened to the once indomitable city fortress and its empire?

Christendom had cannibalized itself. Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy fought endlessly. Westerners often hated each other more than they did their common enemy.

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Eh, by the time of the Ottomans, the "Romans" in Constantinople had ceded so much of its land in Asia Minor and the Balkans. Many times vassal states sided with the Turks because the Turks aside from being powerful, lived up to their commitments and promises. Mehmet was actually probably more Serbian than he was Turk due to intermarriage.

Here's the problem and you see it today, few Europeans trusted the Byzantines. They were always scheming and their scheming came to bite them on the arse. The Ottomans got a foothold in Europe and established their Capitol at Edrine (Adrianople) about 40 miles west of Constantinople.

The reason.....the Venetian and Crusaders had sacked the city when they stopped there and the emperor said he would pay them and then schemed to screw them....that was about a hundred years or so before Mehmet came in and overwhelmed the place.

Mehmet decided that after the fall there was a price to pay for the "Romans" and the thing everyone identified with Constantinople was the Hagia Sophia....so he consecrated it as a mosque and told the Greeks as much, but he did not force any mass conversions.

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few Europeans trusted the Byzantines.

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Many portions of their former Empire disliked them. There's speculation that the reason that Egypt fell so easily to the Arabs was because the Egyptian inhabitants saw the Arabs as liberators from the Byzantines and the oversight of the Church in Constantinople.

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renamed it Istanbul.

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Eh, not really. In fact its formal name wasn't changed until the 1930s. Istanbul comes from a Greek description of the city.

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Its nobody’s business, but the Turks.

Same with Palestine. The people there grew tired of the games the Byzantines would play. The Arabs did not try to screw with them

Many people believe that America is the new Babylon.

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Christendom had cannibalized itself.

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And will absolutely do so again.