Byzantium: From the Beginning
A long time ago south of Greece, small exploration ships landed on what would later be called Crete. They were Minoans, and they built a city called Knossos and later the people of Knossos would land on Greece. The Greeks would become the most powerful civilization in the world, but after Alexander the Great died he left the Empire to his successors. After the Romans arrived, most of the Greek ideas stayed and when Constantine named Byzantium the capitol of the east, Greece was somewhat rebuilt and called Byzantium. Byzantium was now the next in line as worldwide power after Rome fell and was able to keep Rome alive for 1000 more years.
The Byzantine Empire split Christianity into
two parts, their own, eastern Orthodox, and the rest of Europe's,
Catholicism. Because they were Christian and because they were a large
Empire they were the objective in many raids and wars. Their first enemy
was Europe, but after the Muslim conquest the Turks started attacking and forced
the Byzantines to ask for help leading to the Crusades.
In the Crusades the Europeans who could not
afford to use a sea route went through Constantinople (earlier Byzantium, later
Istanbul). This caused the Europeans to get very aggressive towards each other,
since the Byzantines had to hurry the Crusaders across the waterway before the
next group would arrive. Later this would result in the destruction and
pillaging of the city.
After the Crusades failure, the Turkish raids increased and the boarders pressed and pressed, while the monetary situation didn't improve. This resulted in more cost cuts including the quality of the army, until they could no longer hold the positions. It now seemed as if the end would come, but the army gained a new weapon.
When gunpowder came to Europe the Byzantines employed thousands of soldiers called harquebusiers, who carried early gunpowder weapons. These soldiers kept up the new boarder farley well, even though the Empire had lost Egypt, The Holy Land and some newer conquests in Europe. But still slowly the Empire crumbled and at long last the Roman Empire fell.
The reason for it's fall, though, was that many separate attempts on Constantinople which often ended in Byzantine victory, but when one Sultan took a lot soldiers armed with newer weapons and supported by artillery against the city defended by maybe 1,000, and the Turks still took extremely high losses. And on the 1000th year anniversary of Attila the Huns death, 1453, the Empire fell.
The pictures at the top from ensemblestudios.com