To: NotchJohnson
The Byzantine Empire was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East. And when they arrived in Constantinople, they sacked it.
9 posted on
09/09/2004 3:01:11 AM PDT by
PJ-Comix
To: PJ-Comix
"And when they arrived in Constantinople, they sacked it."
Actually, Constantinople was sacked and fatally crippled as a bulwark against the muslims by the Fourth Crusade, which never reached the Holy Land. The Crusade was hijacked by Venice, which supplied the shipping transport for the Crusaders and was more interested in loot than liberation. The Byzantine Empire was briefly ruled by an emperor installed by the crusade and lasted only a couple of hundred years more as a shadow of its former glory and power.
Ironically, the advance of the Arab empire had been forestalled by Genghis Khan, who sacked and destroyed cities across the Middle East and South Central Asia in reaction to the Arabs defiant slaughter of a diplomatic mission of Khan's. The impact on the Arab civilization was analogous to what happened to the Incan Empire. They never recovered their former leadership in warfare, science, mathematics, astronomy, etc. They were left as a withered and bitter shell wallowing in the primitive superstition that is today exemplified by the jihadists. Only oil and liberal "good intentions" has enabled them to infiltrate western societies to destroy them from within.
14 posted on
09/09/2004 3:33:45 AM PDT by
laishly
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