Mahmud Dramali Pasha

Enjoying the patronage of the Valide sultan, he was eventually posted in his family's home province of Drama, succeeding his father Melek Mehmed Pasha as governor.

[4] 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 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.

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.

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.

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.