Turks: The Raiders From The East

    The Turks were Muslims who originated from north of the Holy Land where Parthia was, and were constantly at war with Byzantium and the rest of Europe.  The battle that made them known was probably Manzikert, where they used their strange tactics to attack the Cataphracts.  The tactic they used was often to ride their horses to the front, retreat, and fire behind them (Parthian tactics).  They would use numbers more than tactics to defeat an enemy, though.

    The Turks had begun to raid Anatolia, and pushed right through the middle of it, and they made several attempts on Constantinople, but always failed.  The reason for the failures on Constantinople was that a Sultan, as they were called, would gather a large army, usually of about 50,000 and attack right on the city, they would usually all get killed, and the Sultan would retreat.

    When the crusades began, after Manzikert, the Turks were still very small but were noticed, and their capitol was captured and pillaged, leaving the city, that they didn't even build, in ruin.  The rest of their kingdom was left to defeat the other Muslims, allow-ing them to rebuild.

    There were two main types of Turks, Seljuk  and Ottoman (Ot-u-min), the Seljuk were the ones to do most of the raiding in the beginning, but later the Ottomans would take power and organize the armies into a more realistic style.  Neither one was all that great, but after WWI the Ottoman empire ceased to exist, and it became modern Turkey, which was definitely an improvement.

    When the Ottomans were at the top, they made more organized attempts on Constantinople, still failing to take it though, until one Sultan took a lot of men and attacked the city only defended by maybe 1,000, and yet he still took major losses, but it was a victory enough to take the prize.  As time went on, all the lands formally loyal to Byzantium, were Ottoman, and the Ottoman Empire was formed.

    However, Europe thought that the Empire was to big, and attacked.  Each attempt took a little more out of the Empire, and at the battle of Lepanto the entire Turkish Fleet was destroyed by the European union, leaving others in control of the Mediterranean.  After that the Ottoman Empire stopped excelling and slowly fell apart.

The pictures at the top from ensemblestudios.com

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