Soon afterwards, Venizelos and his leading followers arrived in the city to establish a Provisional Government of National Defence, which entered World War I on the side of the Entente.

Incensed by the successive humiliations and the Bulgarian advance in Macedonia, several Greek officers had gone to Thessaloniki and volunteered to raise troops and join the Allies.

Colonel Epameinondas Zymvrakakis, about 600 men of the Cretan Gendarmerie with three volunteer companies under Major Neokosmos Grigoriadis and thirty other officers blockaded the headquarters of III Corps.

Sarrail arrived on the scene soon after, and commanded all Greek officers who would not join the newly formed "National Defence Committee" uprising to be shipped to southern Greece.

2 September], the "National Defence" received its first substantial reinforcement, as Colonel Nikolaos Christodoulou arrived in the city with the remnants of IV Corps that had refused to surrender and instead withdrawn via Kavala and Samothrace.