Komnenian Restoration - Andronikos I and The End of The Komnenian Restoration

Andronikos I and The End of The Komnenian Restoration

With Manuel's death in 1180 the Byzantine empire was once again plunged into a succession crisis because his son Alexios II Komnenos was only a minor and thusly the empire was ruled through a regency with the Empress Maria at the head. She was quickly deposed by a series of revolts and in her place Andronikos I became emperor. Andronikos was known for his incredible cruelty and he often utilized great acts of violence to get others to follow his orders, which engendered little sympathy from the common people. Though Andronikos worked tirelessly to root out corruption in the Empire, his heavy-handed tactics against the aristocracy naturally led to dissent, and he was eventually overthrown in 1185. His death brought to an end to the Komnenoi dynasty and also the final period of dominance of the Byzantine Empire.

Of equal importance was his failure to prevent the Massacre of the Latins in Constantinople in 1182 when tens of thousands of Western European traders were massacred by mobs in a xenophobic fervor. This contributed to the disunity between the East and the West that culminated in the sack of Constantinople, by the members of the Fourth Crusade, in 1204.

With Andronikos' death the century long revival of the Komnenoi ended and the Empire descended into civil war as the aristocracy and military elite grappled for the Imperial purple. This led to military weakness, which allowed for the Turks to regain much of their territory in Anatolia and within two decades Constantinople would, for the first time in its thousand year history as capital of the Byzantine Empire, be conquered by a foreign power. The decline of the Byzantine Empire began almost immediately, for, without the strong Komnenoi emperors, the previous problems of the Empire, both financial and military, became clear and unstoppable.