Decline of the Byzantine Empire of Constantinople in 1453. The process by which the empire waned, and from when its decline can be traced, is a matter of scholarly debate. In some cases, the entire history of the Byzantine Empire has been portrayed as a protracted period of decline of the Roman Empire. This holds especially for Enlightenment era writers such as Edward Gibbon, author of "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, whose view was coloured by pro-western or anti-clerical biases, and tended to see the whole ten-century empire as merely a
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire my intention to expatiate with the same minuteness on the whole series of the Byzantine history." However the Russian historian George Ostrogorsky writes, "Gibbon and Lebeau were genuine historians—and Gibbon a very great one—and their works, in spite of factual inadequacy, rank high for their presentation of their material." Gibbon's initial plan was to write a history ""of the decline and fall of the "city" of Rome"", and only later expanded his scope to the whole Roman Empire: If I prosecute this "History", I shall not be unmindful of the decline and fall of the "city" of Rome; an interesting