The Black Death was destructive for the Byzantine state. It arrived in Anatolia in late 1346 and reached Constantinople in 1347. As in Europe, the Black Death eliminated a significant proportion of the population in the capital and other towns and aggravated the already poor economic and agrarian conditions in cities and the countryside. The Black Death devastated Byzantium especially because it occurred after two civil wars over succession, in the 1320s and 1340s, which left the state stripped of cash and vulnerable to Venetian, Genoese, and Ottoman intervention and invasions. From 1346 to 1352, the epidemic ravaged Byzantine cities, depleting their populations and leaving few soldiers to defend them.