Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire Roman civilisation which under-girded the Empire. According to this school, drawing its basic premise from the Pirenne thesis, the Roman world underwent a gradual (though often violent) series of transformations, morphing into the medieval world. The historians belonging to this school often prefer to speak of Late Antiquity instead of the Fall of the Roman Empire. In "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (1776–88), Edward Gibbon famously placed the blame on a loss of civic virtue among the Roman citizens. They gradually entrusted the role of defending the Empire to barbarian mercenaries who eventually turned
Decline of the Byzantine Empire fell into decline. After the Battle of Manzikert (1071) it lost control of Anatolia, and while the Komnenos dynasty restored a degree of stability in the 12th century with help from the First Crusade, the empire was captured and partitioned by the Crusaders themselves in the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Even after Byzantine rule was restored in 1261, the empire was now a shadow of its former self, and after the end of the Crusades, the empire had little to set against the rise of the Ottoman Empire during the late medieval period, and was eventually conquered with the Fall