Andronikos I Komnenos overthrown

September 12, 1185

A street mob in Constantinople dragged the terrifying emperor from his hiding place, gouged out an eye, paraded him backwards on a camel, and hacked him to pieces in the hippodrome. His successor Isaac II Angelos inherited a state with no functioning army and no functioning treasury. The savagery of Andronikos's end matched the savagery of his reign, and the dynasty he interrupted would never fully reassemble the empire's broken institutions.