Battle of the Lerna Mills

Battle context

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.