At the head of his army, Dramali set off from Larissa in late June 1822, and swept practically unmolested through eastern Greece: his forces marched unopposed through
Boeotia, where they razed
Thebes, and
Attica, where however he did not attempt to retake the
Acropolis, which had only shortly before surrendered to the Greeks. He passed through the defiles of the
Megaris unmolested, and entered the
Peloponnese. He arrived at Corinth in mid-July, and found the strong fort of
Acrocorinth abandoned without a fight by its Greek garrison. He wed the widow of the fort's murdered former commander, Kiamil Bey, and was joined by Yusuf Pasha of
Patras, who advised him to remain in Corinth, using it as a base, and to build up strong naval forces in the Corinthian Gulf and isolate the Morea, before advancing on
Tripoli. But Dramali, by now utterly self-confident by the Greeks' apparent reluctance to oppose him, decided to march at once to the south, towards the
Argolis. His advance caused a panic among the Greeks: the siege of
Nafplio was abandoned just as the garrison was preparing to surrender, and the provisional government fled
Argos and embarked on ships for safety. However, on arriving at Argos on 11 July, Dramali made two critical mistakes: he did not secure his main supply and retreat route through the
Dervenakia Pass, and ignored the fact that the absence of the
Ottoman Navy meant that he could not be supplied by sea. Instead, he focused on taking the town's fort, stubbornly defended by a 700-strong Greek garrison under
Demetrios Ypsilantis, which held out for twelve vital days, before breaking through the besiegers' lines and escaping. During that time, the Greeks, under
Theodoros Kolokotronis, rallied their forces, and occupied the surrounding hills and defiles, including the Dervenakia. The Greeks systematically looted the villages of the Argolic plain, even setting fire to the crops and damaging the springs, so as to starve the Turkish army. Trapped in the sweltering summer heat of the Argolic plain, without water and food, Dramali was forced to plan withdrawing back to
Corinth. On 26 July he sent out his cavalry as an advance guard towards the Dervenakia pass. But the Greeks were expecting the move, and had taken up positions there. The resulting battle was a complete Greek victory, with few Ottomans managing to escape. Finally, two days later, Dramali set out with his main army. Although he and his bodyguard managed to pass, the majority of his army, as well as the treasury and most baggage and equipment, were trapped in the pass and massacred. The result of Dramali's campaign, which had started so well, was a complete disaster: out of more than 30,000 soldiers, only 6,000 returned to Corinth, where Dramali died of high fever. Dramali's defeat saved the Greek uprising from an early failure. The extent of the defeat was such that it entered into the
modern Greek language as a
proverb: "η καταστροφή του Δράμαλη" (Dramali's catastrophe), which is used to denote a complete disaster. His descendants live today in Egypt and Turkey. == Notes and references ==