Quote Originally Posted by Watchman View Post
And the geostrategic vulnerability is very much a fact; aside from the "natural fortress" of Anatolia - where the Empire indeed fell back to for quite a while - it was painfully short of "naturally defensible" borders, in particular in the dangerously immediate vicinity of the capital itself in the Balkans.
I'm agreeing with most of what you post, but the last time I checked the Danube was quite a defenisible border? Main problem was when they couldn't even defend that one.