Ali Pasha died on January 24, 1822, after years of siege at Ioannina — and his death was a turning point that extended well beyond his own mountainous domain. As long as he had defied the sultan, significant Ottoman military resources had been tied down in northern Greece. With him gone, Hurshid Pasha could move. A Turkish fleet sailed to Patras on the Gulf of Corinth and landed between 8,000 and 9,000 soldiers — a force drawn from Asia Minor, described in the sources as Kaklamans, a contemptuous term the Greek fighters used for these eastern Ottoman troops who were unfamiliar with the terrain and conditions of the Peloponnese.

The Greek situation was described at the time as critical. The revolution was barely a year old, still organizing itself politically through assemblies at Epidaurus, still improvising its military structure. What it had was a number of experienced local captains who knew the land.

Theodoros Kolokotronis, the most famous Greek military leader of the war, had been at the Corinth camp when the Ottoman landing at Patras changed his plans. On January 20 — before the landing, sensing the danger — he had already moved toward Karytaina to raise more troops. Despite political opposition from civilian leaders who questioned his authority, the assembly at Epidaurus eventually appointed him commander-in-chief for the defense of the region around Patras.

Kolokotronis moved methodically. He gathered around 6,000 fighters in addition to the men from Karytaina, marching through Vytina in the mountains of Arcadia before descending toward the Achaean coast. Before arriving himself, he deployed his subordinate commanders to control the approaches to Patras: Dimitris Plapoutas was sent to the position at Saravali, Konstantinos Petmezas to Paleopyrgos, and Gennaios Kolokotronis — Theodoros' own son — to Ovria. These were the chokepoints that controlled movement through the hills and plains between Patras and the interior.

The confrontation came at Chalandritsa, a town in the hills of Achaea northeast of Patras. On 26 May 1822, Greek forces under Plapoutas, Gennaios Kolokotronis, and other chieftains engaged the Ottoman troops of Mehmet Pasha. The outcome was a Greek victory. The Ottoman column suffered heavy losses, and the significance of the battle extended beyond the immediate toll — it was a demonstration that the eastern Ottoman soldiers landing at Patras were not invincible on Achaean ground.

The source of the battle's broader importance, as contemporary Greek accounts noted, lay in what it opened up. The defeat inflicted on the Ottoman forces at Chalandritsa helped clear the way for the eventual expulsion of Ottoman troops from the region. The Greek fighters had shown they could meet and beat this particular force — soldiers who, however numerous, were fighting far from their home territory in unfamiliar mountain terrain.

Chalandritsa sits within the larger arc of the Greek War of Independence, which had begun in 1821 and would continue until 1829. The campaign of 1822 was one of the most dangerous periods of that war: the Ottoman military, now free of the distraction of Ali Pasha, made serious efforts to crush the revolt in the Peloponnese. Battles like Chalandritsa were not isolated skirmishes — they were the contested edges of a war for survival.

Today Chalandritsa is a small town in the regional unit of Achaea, part of the municipality of Patras. The hills around it look much as they must have in 1822: dry, terraced, marked by olive groves and scrub. The battle of May 26 does not have a monument that draws visitors, but the town still carries the name that appears in the Greek-language histories of the revolution written by Kokkinos, Trикouрis, and others who recorded these engagements before living memory of them faded.