While the travelers from China, Japan and Russia wanted to turn the Eastern Roman Empire into a nuclear waste dump in order to get rid of these hot potatoes, Emperor Constantine XI, as a landlord, was also trying to use these terrifying nuclear wastes that could kill people invisibly to create an insurmountable and strong defense line for his own decaying empire, in order to slightly relieve the heavy and breathless border pressure. ,!

-- Compared with China's contemporaries, the defense environment of the Eastern Roman Empire was too sad.

If the Eastern Roman Empire, which stretched from Spain to the Crimea at its height in the sixth century AD, barely had a bit of an imperial grandeur. Then, after the rise of the Arabs in the seventh century, the overseas provinces were completely lost, and the Eastern Roman Empire, which was only a corner of Greece and Asia Minor, was really left with the grievances of being beaten on all sides, and there was not much to see the imperial style of the repulsive party.

In general, the Eastern Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire, was only the wreckage of Rome, a classical empire dragged behind it, and its backbone had long been discounted for various objective reasons. The hard work of the emperors of the past generations has only barely preserved the ancient culture and postponed the decline of the empire. It was not until Ottoman Turkey replaced it on the same land that the difficult work of "shutdown and restart" was completed.

Despite its strategic location as a transportation hub in Eastern Europe – the "crossroads" between Europe and Asia, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea – the Eastern Roman Empire amassed a large amount of gold through logistics and trade. But this gold, which could not be fed or clothed, did not represent the strength of the country in the dark Middle Ages. Opposite. From the point of view of material and manpower, the reserves of the Eastern Roman Empire have always been stretched.

First of all, the core hinterland of the empire, the coastal areas of Asia Minor and the Greek peninsula, although the cradle of ancient Greek civilization, was also a rugged and barren land with low yields. The Danube Valley in the north and Syria in the southeast have large areas of fertile land suitable for agriculture, but they have long been lost to foreign enemies and rarely recovered by the Empire.

Geographical disadvantages. As a result, the Eastern Roman Empire was never self-sufficient in food, and as soon as there was turmoil in the surrounding areas and the sea trade routes were blocked, famine would immediately break out - in the war-torn and turbulent Dark Middle Ages, only grain was the most reliable hard currency!

Second, for most of the history of the Eastern Roman Empire, its borders were never stable. With the exception of Constantinople, there is hardly any territory that has been able to achieve stable rule for hundreds of years, but it has always been repeated over and over again.

Third. The ethnic composition of the Eastern Roman Empire was too complex, and the core people of the empire - the Greeks. At its peak, it never exceeded five million. The rest of the Slavs, Bulgarians, Turks and Arabs, all of them are unfamiliar white-eyed wolves who want to split up at the first opportunity. A large part of these millions of Greek people was consumed in labor-intensive estates (growing cash crops such as olives) on the Aegean coast, resulting in many parts of the empire being sparsely populated, and many border areas were completely uninhabited.

In this way, for most of the history of the Eastern Roman Empire, due to the insufficient population of the core ethnic groups. The entire country could only maintain a standing army of about 50,000 men at most, and the ruler had to use this liliang carefully, as it would be difficult to replenish it in the event of a loss.

To make matters worse, a transportation hub for trade means a place for four wars militarily.

Thus, since its inception, the Eastern Roman Empire had to face foreign enemies in Europe and Asia in many directions. A victory at the cost of huge casualties does not make the country safer. Because, even the Roman emperor managed to raise a main mobile regiment from the border guards and defeated a nomadic army from the northern shore of the Black Sea in Europe. Immediately, a new nomadic tribe will come in its place, and Muslims will come from Asia to find trouble. However, the expensive regular army of the Eastern Roman Empire took a long time to recruit and train, and could not recover as quickly as after suffering heavy losses. In addition, the great families within the Eastern Roman Empire who aspired to the throne would also take advantage of the situation, triggering a series of political turmoil.

Due to ethnic differences and poor assimilation ability, the excessive use of military force by successive Eastern Roman emperors did not lead to a vast territory, but instead plunged the empire into a quagmire of war and disintegrated after exhausting its military resources. Each time the old opponents on the border were cleaned, only a large number of new and tougher opponents appeared, and finally the Eastern Roman Empire fell into the miserable situation of tearing down the east wall and replacing the west wall.

It was an asymmetrical confrontation akin to the War on Terror – the empire's limited military resources were enough to maintain a long border defense line and raise a field legion of tens of thousands of men. Once this hard-won field army is heavily damaged or destroyed in a certain battle, it will lead to the exhaustion of the mobile liliang of the emperor's ** team, and all fronts will be in an emergency, and even the labor force will be tight.

Eventually, when the Italian city-states rose rapidly and seized the control of the sea in the Eastern Mediterranean, the new coastal defense pressure finally made the Eastern Roman Empire unable to support it, and gradually went to the point of no return in the dismal operation.

Now, after Emperor Constantine XI, who was a traverser, opened the time and space channel and hugged the super golden thigh, a crazy cheating combination punch was knocked down, and the Ottoman Empire, as a rival of life and death, had indeed been beaten to death by the master, and it completely collapsed before it had time to react. But the problem is that the liliang of the Eastern Roman Empire itself has not been strengthened much, and it is still in the form of a dying and decrepit state.

What's more, even though there is only one city left on the map, the passive situation of the Eastern Roman Empire's multi-front warfare has not changed.

“…… Adrianople, the core of the Ottoman Empire in Europe and the largest Turkish settlement in Europe, was removed from this strategic hub, and Turkish rule over the Balkans could no longer be maintained. ”

Pointing to the rough parchment map, Emperor Constantine XI spoke eloquently to the travelers, "...... But the defeat of the Turks did not mean the revival of the empire, and the long-dormant Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, Romanians, and Hungarians would soon fill the void left by the Turks and start a new round of fighting for hegemony in the Balkans. Not only did the current empire not defeat these new opponents, but it could not even prevent them from following the route of the Turks and attacking Constantinople again!

In order to solve the military threat on the European side once and for all, so that the empire can concentrate what little liliang there is on the battlefield of Asia Minor in the east, I have to make a very painful decision, like Arthas, the lich king in "Warcraft Shijie......"

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