The Battle of Khresili () was fought in 1757, between the armies of the Kingdom of Imereti and the Ottoman Empire. The king of Imereti, Solomon I defeated the Turkish army. The battle took place on December 14, 1757. Solomon I established a strong monarchy and unified western Georgia. His actions strained the relations between the Georgian King and Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans, in particular, wanted to stop Solomon's struggle against slavery. The Ottomans were in an alliance with rebellious Georgian nobles, one such example was Levan Abashidze, who was fighting against the King of Imereti. Abashidze arrived in Akhaltsikhe and led an Ottoman army to the Kingdom of Imereti. Solomon enticed them into a strategically adroit place near Khresili and decisively defeated them. Background In the 17th century, western Georgia was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman garrisons were dispatched to Tsutskvati, Poti and Shorapani fortresses. 12,000 slaves were sold in the Ottoman Empire every year from Mengrelia alone. Realizing that Georgia was facing the threat of heavy depopulation, the King of Imereti, Solomon I prohibited slavery, opposing turncoat Lords and wanted independence from the Ottoman Empire. Sultan sent Gola Pasha with a large army to punish Solomon I and re-establish Ottoman rule over the Kingdom of Imereti. Battle Early in the morning, the Georgians started the attack. Ottoman army was cornered exactly where king Solomon I wanted them. Georgian attack was well prepared, numerically smaller Georgian army compensated its small size by high morale and determination to wipe out invading Turks from their land. King Solomon personally led his small army's charge, reached the commander of Turkish army and cut his head off. Turks panicked and tried to escape. But their leader, Abashidze somehow restored moral in Turkish army and they returned back to battle, but soon Abashidze was killed by Georgian soldier: Gegela Tevdoradze (later he was called Gegelashvili). after they saw the death of their commander, Selcuks finally gave up on fighting and Georgians decisively defeated the Ottoman army, and slaughtered most of 45,000 Turkish invasion force. Ottomans never recovered from such a massive loss of manpower. Two further attempts to invade Imereti after this battle were with smaller Ottoman armies of 20,000 and 13,000 people strong, and while they were still numerically superior to Solomon I's small army, they were defeated just as well. This marked the end of two centuries of Turkish influence