alternatehistory.com

Part 16: The Battle of Argolis


With Papaflessas dead, the Greek Army sent running, and Navarino now under his complete control, Ibrahim Pasha began to dispatch his forces to ravage the countryside. It is said that all of Greece left in his wake from Methoni to Argos was a complete and utter wasteland with barely a soul remaining. Men were killed by the hundreds, women and children were enslaved by the thousands, and dozens of villages and townships were wiped from the map. It is said that anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 people were either killed or shipped to Egypt in chains. News of his brutality spread like wildfire across Europe as the Saracens of Egypt initiated their “Barbarization Project” to remove all the good Christians of Greece from the lands of their forefathers under pain of death. Whether the Barbarization Project was a real objective of Ibrahim Pasha no one can say, as no documents remain indicating the extent of his intentions while in Greece. His actions were equally conflicted as he routinely massacred villages for things as little as a slight offensive only to spare many others based on his compassionate nature.

What can be determined is that over the course of the next month, Ibrahim’s army moved East from Navarino Bay; his destination unknown. In response, the Greek Government instated conscription across Greece with the intent of raising 10,000 men each year for a period of three years. They also tasked Archstrategos Ypsilantis with defending Argolis, which was presently defended by one regiment, numbering 1,700 men and roughly 2,500 klephts and militiamen of dubious ability. Accounts of Ibrahim’s March from the Sea indicated that he was moving towards Tripolitsa, and reports from the walled city verified that Egyptian soldiers were in fact in the vicinity. When the returning survivors from Maniakion arrived in Nafplion, Ypsilantis finally gathered the confidence to confront Ibrahim and marched forth from Nafplion on the 27th of June. His goal was to catch the Egyptians unaware, pinning them against the walls of Tripolitsa, and destroying them there and then. When he reached the outskirts of Tripolitsa, he found that the Egyptians were nowhere to be found. The Greeks had fallen for a trap of their own.

Overnight, Ibrahim and his host had lifted the siege of Tripolitsa and departed south towards Astros, with the goal of taking Argos and Nafplion which had been left largely undefended by Ypsilantis’ advance.[1] The Phanariot’s blunder provided Ibrahim with a golden opportunity to crush the rebellion once and for all were it not for the opposition of a ragtag bunch of armatoloi, kapos, klephts, farmers, merchants, philhellenes, sailors, and militia led by the Strategos Yannis Makriyannis. Makriyannis had fought against Ibrahim only days before at New Navarino before its fall. In his memoirs, he details the events of his daring escape from Pylos when he and the abled bodied members of his garrison escaped from the castle at dusk on the 20th of May. Fighting their way clear of the Egyptians surrounding Pylos, Makriyannis and most of his men managed to escape into the hills of Messenia before Ibrahim arrived in force. Though he succeeded in breaking out of the castle with many of his men, he considered his efforts at Navarino a failure. The act was a blemish on his pride and so he sought to redeem himself for his failures in a rematch with Ibrahim.


Gathering at Myloi, Makriyannis and around 200 men turned the small mill into a fortress.[2] Holding Myloi was vital to the defense of Nafplion as it held the stores of grain and munitions depots for the capital. Most importantly the Myloi stream provided Nafplion with fresh water, as its own cisterns had, rather embarrassingly, been allowed to collapse over the years. After several days of strengthening the walls and constructing fortifications around the village, Ibrahim arrived. In one last act of desperate bravado, Makriyannis sent the horses back to Nafplion and had the ships resting on the beach sent away as well. If Nafplion was to be held then Myloi must not fall; there would be no retreat from Myloi for Yannis Makriyannis and his men.

By the time Ibrahim Pasha arrived on the 28th of June, nearly 600 Greeks had assembled to oppose him. In what would prove to be a rare mistake by Ibrahim Pasha, the Egyptian commander chose to employ only half his available force against the Greeks, sending the other half to ravage the countryside and to defend his long and exposed supply lines. Still outnumbered nearly 10 to 1, Makriyannis and his men bravely opposed the battle-hardened Egyptians. Each house in the town was barricaded and occupied by men ready to fight to the death, forcing the Egyptians to go house by house in a bloody conflict. As the battle commenced a heavy smoke began to fill the air as shot after shot after shot rang out in the sleepy little hamlet. Seeking to instill chaos into the ranks of the enemy, Makriyannis directed his sharpshooters to target the Egyptian officers to deprive the rank and file of their leaders.

As the battle dragged on, the Egyptians surprisingly began to waver, what was supposed to be a relatively easy battle against an untrained rabble had become a grueling affair. In one of the few instances in the war, the vaunted discipline of the Egyptians began to breakdown after several hours of constant battle. In a bold gambit, Yannis Makriyannis drew his sword and rushed the Egyptians alone at first, but soon he was followed by the entirety of the Greek force at Myloi. For the first time in four months, the Egyptians broken ranks and fled the field, Ibrahim had been repulsed.


After the initial failures of Ibrahim’s first assault on the 28th he prepared a second for the following day on the 29th of June, but by the end of the second day the Egyptians were beaten back once more. A third attempt against Myloi was scrapped when reinforcements to the tune of 700 men arrived at the fortress town, doubling Makriyannis’ force. More worryingly, however, were the reports that Demetrios Ypsilantis and his men were sighted several miles to their rear. Once more, though, Ibrahim would disappoint Ypsilantis as he began a hasty withdrawal from Argolis entirely. While Ypsilantis did manage to catch members of Ibrahim’s rearguard, the engagement that followed near the village of Kalamaki was inconclusive. At best, this confrontation could be considered a draw as the Egyptians were able to retreat into the Morean interior in good order while the Greeks could claim victory for driving the enemy from the field, a position Makriyannis, Ypsilantis, and the Greek Government played to their advantage. Still, the sudden retreat of Ibrahim Pasha and his host was disconcerting to the Greeks as victory was within his grasp. Had he marched on Nafplion it would have fallen and the Greek government would have fallen with it.

It would later be discovered that Ibrahim Pasha refrained from the third attack at Myloi upon sighting several British and French vessels anchored offshore in the Argolic Gulf. The British and French ships had arrived in the city on the 30th to prevent what they saw as a looming slaughter of the cities’ inhabitants as victory for the Egyptians seemed inevitable. Despite this, neither the British nor the French intended to deny the Egyptians control of the city, Ibrahim not knowing this obviously interpreted their presence differently. Believing that the British and French would side with the Greeks against him if he pressed attack against Nafplion, he was left with no choice but to stay his hand against Nafplion and its people.

When Demetrios Ypsilantis attempted to follow Ibrahim three days later, he himself was ambushed on the road near Korythio. The Greeks lack of cavalry proved to be their undoing and they were quickly routed in a humiliating display. Fleeing back to Nafplion with his tail between his legs, Ypsilantis was forced to wait out the remainder of the year while Ibrahim was allowed to act with relative impunity in Arcadia. This defeat was made worse by the arrival of fresh reinforcements from Egypt in early August, replacing Ibrahim’s losses from the earlier campaigns in Messenia and Argolis and bringing his total strength above 15,000 men.

While the Greeks had achieved some minor victories against Ibrahim Pasha on land, they were fleeting at best. Ibrahim could not be everywhere however, as most of his raiding parties were routinely defeated by the Greeks in the Morean interior. Their best results came at sea where on two separate occasions, Greek fireships managed to successfully destroy 7 ships of the Egyptian fleet, which would prove to be only a minor inconvenience for Ibrahim rather than the massive setback the Greeks portrayed it to be. An attempt against the Egyptian fleet at Alexandria was made, but it resulted in only the sinking of eight Egyptian vessels at the cost of three fireships. The poor wind in the harbor prevented the fires from spreading to the rest of the densely packed fleet, limiting the damage. While these naval losses were indeed minor, they revealed the continued vulnerability of Ottoman and Egyptian vessels to Greek fireships and over time it would become a protracted problem for Ibrahim, one which he could not solve himself. Still, Ibrahim’s prowess on land had been established as the Greeks for the remainder of the year opted to avoid facing him directly and for the next five months Ibrahim ravaged the Morea with relative impunity before entering winter quarters outside Patras in late November.


Next Time: Freedom’s Home


[1] In OTL, Tripolitsa was ceded to Ibrahim without a fight. Believing he couldn’t defend the city against the Egyptians, Theodoros Kolokotronis opted to abandon it and burn it to the ground against the wishes of the Greek Government. Unfortunately, Ibrahim arrived faster than expected and quickly managed to put out the fires. The Greeks only regained the city after the war buy at that point, Ibrahim burned it to the ground and razed its great walls. Without Kolokotronis’ desperate act, it is my belief that Tripolitsa would remain in Greek hands, at least for the time being, and rather than commit to a long siege of the city, he would choose to advance on Nafplion which was lightly defended at the time.

[2] Myloi, the Mills of Lerna, or just Lerna, was the site where according to legend the hero Hercules slew the Hydra.