Battle of the Lerna Mills

Overview

The Battle of the Lerna Mills was fought on 25 June 1825, in Lerna, Greece between the Egyptian forces of Ibrahim Pasha and Greek forces led by General Yannis Makriyannis, Demetrios Ypsilantis, Andreas Metaxas and Konstantinos Mavromichalis. It was the first Greek success against Ibrahim and saved the city of Nafplio, seat of the government, from capture.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

The Battle of the Lerna Mills marked the first Greek military success against Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, whose forces had intervened in the conflict on behalf of the Ottomans and posed a severe threat to Greek resistance. By defeating or repelling Ibrahim's force of 5,000 at Lerna, the Greek commanders—Makriyannis, Ypsilantis, Metaxas, and Mavromichalis—prevented the capture of Nafplio, which served as the seat of the First Hellenic Republic's government. Loss of the capital at that stage of the war would have dealt a potentially decisive blow to the organized Greek independence movement. The engagement thus stabilized the political and military situation at a critical moment, demonstrating that Ibrahim's Egyptian expeditionary force, which had already inflicted serious setbacks on Greek forces elsewhere, could be checked in the field.

Forces & casualties

Commanders (5)