Isaac I Komnenos

Isaac Komnenos grew up orphaned, raised under the eye of Basil II, and rose through the ranks to command the empire's eastern armies by the 1040s. In 1057, disgusted with the newly crowned Michael VI, he led a conspiracy of eastern generals, was proclaimed emperor in June, and defeated the loyalist forces at the Battle of Hades. Though Isaac sought compromise as Michael's heir, a faction in Constantinople led by Patriarch Michael Keroularios forced the emperor's abdication, and Isaac was crowned in the Hagia Sophia on 1 September. He rewarded allies but enacted brutal fiscal reform - salary cuts, harsh taxes, confiscation of Church properties - all aimed at restoring the army and filling the coffers his predecessors had drained. Keroularios, who'd helped make him, turned against him; Isaac had the patriarch arrested and exiled in November 1058. The frontiers held, Hungary signed a treaty in 1059, and Isaac personally crushed a Pecheneg revolt that summer - then fell ill. Pressured by the scholar Michael Psellos, he abdicated in favor of Constantine X Doukas, retired to the Stoudion monastery, and died in June 1060.