200 YEARS FROM THE BATTLE OF MANIAKI

The invasion of the Peloponnese by Ibrahim Pasha’s Egyptians found the Greek government unprepared and the people divided from the civil war, which had ended with the defeat of the insurgents and imprisonment of prominent Greek commanders. After landing unopposed at Methoni, Ibrahim seized Navarino and was ready to march against Tripolitsa, in the heartland of the Peloponnese. Amidst government inactivity, the Greek priest and fighter Grigorios Dikaios Papaflessas took the initiative to set up a troupe of 1,500 and fortified the village of Maniaki in western Messenia. Vastly outnumbered, most of the Greek troops fled, but Papaflessas decided to stay and fight, with just 500 men. In the battle of Maniaki, on 20 May 1825, the Greeks suffered a crushing defeat, and Papaflessas was killed in a heroic last stand, for which he earned Ibrahim’s respect and was hailed by the Greeks as the “the new Leonidas”. His sacrifice, even belatedly, managed to galvanise and unite the Greeks against the mortal threat facing the Revolution.