army by forming a square around St. Peter's Basilica to give Pope Clement VII time to escape through secret tunnels, and held the doors until Clement could escape. At the 1795 battle of Krtsanisi, where the Persian army led by Agha Muhammad Khan defeated the Georgians, the Three Hundred Aragvians – a detachment of the highlanders from the Aragvi valley – loyally fought and died in order to enable the escape of King Heraclius II, for which they are remembered as national heroes and were canonized by the Georgian Church. The Battle of Pavan Khind involved a rearguard last stand. It took place on July 13, 1660 at a mountain pass in the vicinity of fort Vishalgad, near the city of Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India between the Maratha warrior Baji Prabhu Deshpande and Siddi Masud of Adil Shahi dynasty. 300 Marathas in a rearguard action, held off an attacking force of 10,000 Bijapuris, allowing their king Shivaji to escape to a nearby fort. Ultimately the battle ended with the destruction of the rearguard Maratha forces, and a tactical victory for the Adil Shahi Sultanate, but failed to achieve its strategic objective of capturing the Maratha king Shivaji. The Battle of Chamkaur occurred in 1704 when the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, and a small force of 40 Sikhs, was attacked by a much larger force of Mughal soldiers at his fort for his refusal to convert to Islam. The forty Sikhs fought to their death, allowing enough time for the Guru to escape the fort and live another day. Defending tactically crucial point During the second Persian invasion of Greece the Greeks hoped to use the narrow pass of Thermopylae to prevent the vastly large army of the Persians from outflanking them. A Greek force of 7,000 men marched north to block the pass in the middle of 480 BC. The Persian army, ranging between about 100,000 and 150,000, arrived at the pass in late August or early September. During the Battle of Thermopylae, the vastly outnumbered Greeks held off the Persians for seven days (including three of battle) before the rear-guard was annihilated in one of history's most famous last stands. During two full days of battle, the small force led by Leonidas blocked the only road by which the massive Persian army could pass. When Leonidas became aware that his force was being outflanked, he dismissed the bulk