On 9 September 1922, Turkish military and guerilla forces entered the city of Smyrna (now İzmir), in Asia Minor, which was previously occupied by Greece by the Treaty of Sèvres.

Hundreds of thousands of Greek residents from Asia Minor fled to Smyrna seeking transportation across the sea to escape the advancing Turks.

Anti-royalist factions, seizing the moment of public outrage, moved against the Pro-Royalist government and a military coup d'état unfolded in Athens and the Aegean Islands.

His sentence was then mitigated to banishment from Greece for life as he was found to be "completely lacking in high military command experience" (Greek: "της τελείας απειρίας περί την διοίκησιν ανωτέρων μονάδων").

[citation needed] The executions were a kind of shock for the Greek conservatives, while they exacerbated the conflict between the royalists and the liberals the next decades, at least until the establishment of the 4th of August Regime.

[3] The lawsuit to overturn the previous convictions for high treason was made in an effort to rewrite school textbooks that had been unfair to the six, and promote the belief that the six had been scapegoats to appease public anger at the humiliation that the Greeks had suffered in the Asia Minor Catastrophe and that they (who had no desire to see Greek forces defeated) had been in reality just victims of circumstances they were unable to control.