The Mongol Invasions in Europe and the Middle East

The Mongols were the last of the great Central Asian invaders that troubled Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and subsequent European history. The East Romans had just experienced their own cataclysm in the form of the Fourth Crusade, which had broken the Roman Empire into pieces. Paradoxically this may have mitigated the impact of the Mongol invasions just a few decades later on. And so oddly the Romans weathered the storm slightly better than their neighbors and gained an advantage over them because of it.