The reign of Isaac Angelus ushered in a worse period of degradation. Even the brutality of Andronicus had been in some measure redeemed by its strength, but under his weak and contemptible successor the Empire suffered from the worst results of incompetence. The Emperor lavished his revenues in building churches and palaces, in collecting relics and sacred icons, in ministering to the luxury and vanity of a crowd of parasites and dependants. He put the administrative offices up for sale, and allowed their purchasers to recoup themselves by oppressing the provincials. His ten years’ rule was full of military disasters. The imposition of a new tax was followed by the revolt of the Bulgarians, who had lived as peaceful subjects of the Empire since their conquest, two hundred years previously, by Basil II. [see pages 163–165]. In a short time the whole of Bulgaria had shaken off the yoke of Constantinople, and the mercenary arms of Conrad of Montferrat. The efforts of Isaac, who took the field in person against the rebels, were powerless to win back a warlike and united people. The loss of Bulgaria was not the only humiliation of Isaac’s reign. We have already seen how the Third Crusade dealt roughly with his power, how Frederick Barbarossa, provoked by his treachery, forced him to make an abject submission, and how Richard of England permanently turned Cyprus into a feudal Frankish kingdom, utterly unconnected with the Empire. Isaac had also to buy off the attacks of the Sultan of Roum by the payment of tribute. In the midst of all these disasters his wretched government was abruptly ended by a palace conspiracy, formed against him by his elder brother Alexius, while he was absent engaged in the Bulgarian war. Isaac hurried back to Constantinople, only to be deposed, blinded, and immured in a monastery (1195). [Sidenote: Alexius III., 1195–1203.]