Description

From the first moment of the Revolution, the monastery of Arkadi was the focus of the struggles due to its great strategic importance. The Turks asked the abbot Gabriel Marinakis to expel the Revolutionary Committee from the monastery with the threat that they would destroy it but the abbot refused. On September 24, Colonel P. Koronaios was proclaimed leader.

Koronaios considered that the location was not suitable for defence, but the Abbot of the Monastery Gabriel did not want to leave it. So he proceeded to defensive preparations, installed Lieutenant I. Dimakopoulos as a guard and went to the provinces to recruit warriors.

The Turkish forces, consisting of 15,000 regular armies and supported by thirty cannons, under Mustafa Nailis Pasha, campaigned against the Monastery. At the same time, he asked the abbot Gabriel to surrender. The answer was no. There were 964 people in the monastery, 325 men and the rest women and children.

Exhausted and sure of the captivity and all the consequences, Konstantinos Giamboudakis from the village of Adele in Rethymno is locked up with other warriors and women and children in the gunpowder depot. The firing of the barrels with gunpowder caused the destruction of the Monastery and the death of many Greeks and many Turkish invaders.