Rory Scullion

One glaring omission from the narrative. It completely ignores the importance of the Fourth Crusade. The Latin armies of that Crusade took the city in 1204 and ruled it for 57 years. This dealt a crippling blow to the Romans from which they were never able to recover, it never even came close. By the time Mehmet came it power, the ‘empire’ consisted of little more than Constantinople at it’s immediate environs. Mehmet didn’t conquer an empire, he merely finished it off. The real damage was done by Constantinople’s Christian ‘allies’ 250 years earlier. I’m not sure whether this was done to make Mehmet, though great, out to be even greater, or to hide the fact that Christendom didn’t do enough to help it. The fact is fellow Christians effectively killed the Roman Empire, Mehmet just delivered the ‘coup de grâce’.