Threads
The Revolution of 1821
Government seat, supply depot and battlefield of the young Greek state.
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1822–1826
A German volunteer describes fortified Myli
The philhellene Gottfried Müller from Bremen wrote that Myli had several long houses along the sea and a former Turkish garden with a high wall, which the Greeks had turned into a stronghold. The spring drove a mill with…
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July 1822
Kolokotronis makes the mills his headquarters
In the summer of 1822, as Dramali's army stood in the plain of Argos, Theodoros Kolokotronis made the mills of Lerna his headquarters. According to Samuel Howe he gathered up to 6,000 armed peasants there before the…
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July 1822
The Greek senate takes refuge at Myli
When Dramali's Ottoman army poured into the Argolid in July 1822, the Greek senate fled to Myli. Dimitrios Ypsilantis fell back there with about 600 men, taking position between the sea and the foot of the steep…
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24 November 1822
A police overseer for the Mills
During the War of Independence Myloi was a harbour and a supply point, so the revolutionary government gave it its own police official. Andreas Papadiamantopoulos was appointed "overseer of the police at Myloi". These…
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31 May 1823
Harbour master and police chief of Myloi, 1823–1824
Spyros Stathopoulos became "general harbour master and police overseer of Myloi" and served until early 1824. After him came Konstantinos Michalopoulos ("Astynomos"), Panagis Orfanos as acting police chief (March 1824)…
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March 1824 – June 1824
Myloi, seat of the Greek government
For more than two months in the spring of 1824, the Executive of Georgios Kountouriotis governed from Myloi and the ships off its shore. Proclamations and letters of the time are signed 'from Myloi of Nafplio'; the…
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30 March 1824
The government arrives by sea at the mills
During the civil war of 1824, two brigs carrying the members of the government dropped anchor in the roadstead of the mills of Lerna. Nafplio was in the hands of their opponents, so the mills became their foothold on the…
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31 March 1824
Admiral Miaoulis fires on the mills
Panos Kolokotronis, son of the general and on the opposing side in the civil war, had placed two small cannon at the mills. Admiral Andreas Miaoulis fired on them from the sea; the soldiers fled to Argos and government…
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25 April 1824
Colonel Stanhope comes ashore at the mills
The British philhellene Colonel Leicester Stanhope landed at the mills and went on to Kiveri, where he addressed the Greek senate.
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17 May 1824
Mourning salutes for Byron off Myloi
A report sent 'from Myloi of Nafplio' tells that the memorial service for Lord Byron, who had died at Missolonghi, was held that day in Argos. The flagship lying off Myloi fired mourning salutes.
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22 May 1824
Kolettis writes a letter from Myloi
Ioannis Kolettis, member of the Executive, dated a letter 'From Myloi of Nafplio, 10 May 1824'. It was printed half a century later in an Athens newspaper. A French version of a proclamation from the same days carries…
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June 1825
Admiral de Rigny warns Makriyannis
While the defences were going up, the French admiral Henri de Rigny visited the mills and told Makriyannis that his men were too few and the position too weak to stand against Ibrahim's cannon. Makriyannis answered that…
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June 1825
Makriyannis fortifies the mills
Makriyannis and the war minister Andreas Metaxas chose to stop Ibrahim at Myloi, then a hamlet of about thirty houses. Makriyannis built ramparts, cut loopholes in the garden wall and strengthened the old stone tower.…
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24 June 1825
Women and children taken aboard a French ship
On the evening before the battle, Admiral de Rigny, at anchor in the roadstead of the mills, took the women and children of the place on board his ship. After the fighting he sent rum to the Greek defenders.
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24 June 1825
Food and ammunition stored at the mills
As Ibrahim Pasha marched on Nafplio, a corps of 250 men was sent at once to seize the position of the mills, where large stores of food and ammunition had been laid up. A newspaper of the time wrote that this was exactly…
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25 June 1825
The Battle of Myloi
Ibrahim Pasha's army attacked the fortified mills in the late afternoon, in three columns along the Argos road, over the hill and from the Kiveri side. A few hundred Greeks under Dimitrios Ypsilantis, Makriyannis and…
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25 June 1825
A French eyewitness describes the battle lines
According to Jourdain, the French general Roche met Ypsilantis and Mavromichalis in the mills that morning. He counted 227 Greeks: 100 to the right of the mills, 100 on the slope to the left and the rest behind the…
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25 June 1825
Makriyannis wounded, few Greek losses
Makriyannis was wounded in the fighting but kept leading his men without letting them see it. The Greeks lost only a handful of men, among them a philhellene, while more than a hundred of Ibrahim's soldiers were killed…
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25 June 1825
Two Americans among the defenders
Samuel Gridley Howe described the position as some mills on the seashore, surrounded by a wall, with a garden and an outer wall. A boat from Nafplio brought about twenty volunteers, among them three Swiss and two…
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7 July 1825
Horsemen sent to burn Kiveri are driven off
Twelve days after the battle the enemy sent sixty horsemen to set fire to Kiveri. Greeks who came out from the mills drove them away.
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9 October 1826
Troops hold the fortifications of the mills
More than a year after the battle the mills were still a military post. A newspaper reported that the fortifications of the mills were occupied by troops under General Giannakis Rangos and Mitros Deligeorgis.
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1827
Generals agree to cut the garrison at the mills
Because promised food supplies did not arrive, the generals Stratos, Grivas and Veris decided to reduce the number of soldiers 'at the Mills and in Nafplio'. In the same months a man was held at Myloi by soldiers because…
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3 October 1827
Medicine against fever requested at Myloi
Captain Konstantis Veris, who held Myloi with his soldiers, asked Ioannis Kolettis to send medicine against 'the fever'. The marshes of Lerna made malaria a constant danger for anyone stationed at the mills.
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9 October 1827
A captain claims the harbour office of Myloi
Konstantis Veris asked for the return of the harbour office (limenarcheio) that had been assigned to him. It shows that in 1827 Myloi was a landing place with harbour dues, and that the soldiers holding it collected…
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14 October 1827
'No water for the mills': a captain's threat
In the civil strife around Nafplio in 1827, the mills of Myloi ground the grain for the fortress. Konstantis Veris wrote to Kolettis that he was asked to allow 10,000 oka of grain to be milled for the fortress, but that…
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July 1832
Fighting at Myli after the murder of Kapodistrias
In the chaotic months after Governor Kapodistrias was murdered, rival Greek factions clashed at Myli. The archaeologist Ludwig Ross, newly arrived in Nafplio, wrote that General Krieziotis and his Roumeliot troops had…
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1836–1839
Makriyannis has the battle painted
In the later 1830s Makriyannis asked the folk painter Panagiotis Zografos and his sons to paint the battles of the Revolution as he remembered them. One of the series shows the Battle of the Mills of Nafplio, with the…
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1962
Headmistress Maria Pagkalou and the battle monument
In 1962 the Aspis of Argos praises the "progressive headmistress of the primary school of Myloi", Maria Pagkalou, for what she achieved within a few months together with the community committee. A later article says the…