the Christian Churches of the East and West, though he never fully achieved this goal. But in Anatolia, Manuel's successes were more suspect, and his reign is highlighted by his defeat at the Battle of Myriokephalon in 1176 at the hands of the Seljuks. Historians have long debated the importance of this defeat, with some calling it an unmitigated disaster while others say that the emperor emerged from it with most of his army intact. All agree though that the era of Komnenian invincibility ended with this battle, and the empire never again took the offensive in Anatolia, a premonition for the coming weakness of the empire. Regardless of the true story, it is clear that after Myriokephalon Byzantine advances in Anatolia were forever halted and all they could do was merely maintain the status quo afterwards. Yet the losses were quickly made good, and in the following year Manuel's forces inflicted a defeat upon a force of "picked Turks". The Byzantine commander John Vatatzes, who destroyed the Turkish invaders at the Battle of Hyelion and Leimocheir, not only brought troops from the capital but also was able to gather an army along the way; a sign that the Byzantine army remained strong and that the defensive program of western Asia Minor was still successful. 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 still a minor. Empress Maria ruled the empire as regent, but she was quickly deposed by a series of revolts, and in her place Andronikos I became emperor. Andronikos was known for his incredible cruelty; he often utilized great acts of violence to get others to follow his orders, engendering 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. 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. The death of Andronikos ended the century-long revival of