The Duke of Wellington’s exhortation was not heeded by anyone. Neither by historians nor by writers. War, and more specifically a battle, has always exerted a fascination on people and, often, evoked mixed feelings of repulsion and attraction. War stories have always stirred intense emotions, not because of swords, weapons or shells, tanks, fighters or battleships, but simply because people take part in a battle. People who kill and are killed. Often, especially in older wars, people from next door. A grandfather, a father, an uncle. Inside a bomber and behind the sights of a rifle there are always people. People who are anxious, afraid, who want to survive, who are capable of heroic acts but also of the most abhorrent atrocities, people who want to forget but memory does not let them. Fortunately, the times have passed when war narratives were perceived exclusively as something “heroic,” “national-patriotic,” grandiloquent, bombastic – ultimately as something that presents only one aspect or even distorts an extreme reality. We now know that a battle, just like a person or an army participating in it, has many more than just one side.

Greek history is, unfortunately, full of “war pages.” In this series, therefore, the objective purpose of our narratives is to recall such war episodes of Greece, some well-known and others less known or forgotten, but with an emphasis on