Saakadze surreptitiously united Kartli and Kakheti behind him. He deviously ‘advised’ Qarachaqay Khan to split his forces into small groups and send them into Kakheti, while the major army camped near Martqopi. On March 25, 1625, Saakadze summoned the war council where he personally slew Qarachaqay Khan and Yusuf Khan of Shirvan, while his son, Avtandil, and his Georgian escorts killed other Qizilbash commanders, including Imam Verdi Khan, Qarachaqay's son. Receiving a signal, Zurab Eristavi – another Georgian noble in Abbas's service – charged with his main forces, virtually annihilating leaderless Iranian troops. Annunciation Day (25 March) brought an extraordinary victory – Saakadze's and Duke Zurab's army massacred 27,000 out of 30,000 strong Turkoman-Persian army, took their arsenal and besieged Tbilisi's citadel before the puppet-king Simon II (1619–1630) could arrive. Within days, all Kartli and Kakheti was in Georgian hands. Only Tbilisi's Iranian garrison, its water supplies cut off, still held out. After that, Saakadze's army invaded neighbouring provinces of the Safavid Empire – plundering Ganja and razing to the ground countryside to the Araxes river, thus avenging Shah Abbas’ invasions. Since the Georgian Uprising was sudden, Qizilbash tribes living in Karabakh were caught by surprise and had to flee further south hastily. Even though Georgians managed to capture thousands of Qizilbashes. As Saint Luarsab II of Kartli had already been martyred on the orders of the Shah in 1622, Teimuraz I was invited from Gonio to take the crowns of Kartli and Kakheti, thereby uniting both Kingdoms. Abbas I, like Iran's and Turkey's chroniclers, was aghast at this debacle. His counterattack came in June 1625, when another Qizilbash army numbering 40,000, led by Isa Khan and Kaikhosro-Mirza, entered in Kartli and bivouacked on the Marabda Field, while the Georgians were higher up in the Kojori gorge. At the council of war, George Saakadze urged King Teimuraz I and other lords to remain in position, since descending into the valley would allow the Iranians to take advantage of their numerical superiority as well as firepower. However, powerful lords were concerned about the enemy ravaging their estates and threatened to defect unless the battle was given at once, thus the Grand Mouravi was overruled. On July 1, 1625, Teimuraz I ordered the attack. The Iranians, armed with the latest weaponry, were well prepared for the assault, having dug trenches and deployed their troops in four lines, with the first kneeling, the