Every named land and sea battle fought by Greeks for a Greek cause, from the fall of Trebizond to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974: the revolts under Venetian and Ottoman rule, the War of Independence and the later risings, and every battle of the Greek state, at home and abroad. Where each was fought, against whom, and who won.
Pick a period, or drag the year slider to see the battles of any five years; Play runs through them from 1461. Each dot is a place, its area the number of battles there, and its slices the opponents, starting at 12 o’clock and running clockwise in the order of the legend. Diamonds are sea battles; dashed rings are battles placed only within their region, in the colour of the most frequent opponent; triangles at the edge point to Normandy and Korea. Nearby dots merge as you zoom out and split as you zoom in. Hover or tap a dot for its battles; select it to list them with their full records.
The Greek record against each opponent in the 452 battles with a known result. The Greek sides are counted together; civil wars are left out. A battle with several opponents counts against each of them, and once in the total. Select a row to list its battles.
Egypt: Muhammad Ali’s army and fleet under Ibrahim, 1823–28. Ali Pasha: the Souli wars and Lefkada, 1792–1807. Bulgarian bands: IMRO and Exarchist bands in Macedonia, 1904–08. Albanians: Albanian irregulars and the Albanian state. Others: Akrotiri 1897, Noemvriana 1916. Allies on the Greek side (the British, Americans and others in 1941–53) are not opponents and are not counted.
Select a row for the full record. Results give the winner first; the coloured edge marks a Greek win (blue), draw (grey) or defeat (orange). Greeks: the revolutionaries of 1821–32 or the forces of the Greek state. Where the sources of 1821–32 give Old Style dates, the New Style is given beside them, and the list follows the New Style. A hollow marker means that only the region of the battle is known.
The seven images of the set, made for X: the map, Greece, Asia Minor and Cyprus enlarged, the record by opponent, and the list in four parts.
A named land or sea battle: one with its own name in the standard histories or in English or Greek Wikipedia, including named ambushes and sieges with real fighting. Left out: raids on villages or houses, ambushes known only from a description, captures and surrenders without fighting, and phases of a larger battle that would count it twice. Each war’s campaign boxes and battle lists on English and Greek Wikipedia were checked so that nothing named is missed.
Greeks fighting for a Greek cause: the Ρωμιοί who fought as Greeks, the Greek-speaking and Greek-identifying Orthodox communities anywhere (Pontus, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Crete, Macedonia, Thrace, Epirus, the Danubian Principalities in 1821, Theodoro in the Crimea), Albanian-speaking Souliotes, Himariotes and Arvanites and Vlach-speaking Greeks among them. Revolts backed by a foreign power count (the Orlov revolt of 1770, Lambros Katsonis). Greeks serving in foreign armies are left out (the stradioti, Lepanto, Candia, Chesma, Russia’s Greek Legion of 1854, Napoleon’s and Britain’s Greek units, Ottoman Greeks in the Ottoman army), and so are battles with no Greek force (Navarino, 1827). Serbs, Bulgarians and Romanians, also of the Orthodox millet, had their own national movements and are not counted.
Each battle takes the colour of the Greeks’ opponent: Ottomans and Egyptians (with Ali Pasha, the Barbary corsairs and the Crimean Tatars), Turks (the Turkish Republic and the Turkish Cypriots), Italians and Germans, Bulgarians (the state and the IMRO bands), or others (the British, the Chinese in Korea, the Bolsheviks, the Albanians, the Great Powers). Civil-war battles are Greek v Greek, blue. Each place is drawn as a small pie: its area grows with the number of battles there, and the slices give the number against each opponent, starting at 12 o’clock and running clockwise in the order of the legend.
The victor is the side that won on the battlefield: it held the field, routed the enemy, took the position or destroyed the fleet. Strategic outcomes and disagreements between Greek and Turkish (or other) accounts are in the notes. For a Greek unit inside a larger Allied battle, the result is the battle’s. A draw is an indecisive battle, or one that both sides claimed with no clear verdict. The 55 civil-war battles are listed and mapped but not scored, and so is the one battle with an unknown result.
Fourteen research batches by period, each following the same written rules; then a check of the entries against Greek and English Wikipedia, which added battles from their categories and the Civil War of 1946–49; then a focused fact-check of every uncertain entry, which settled results and dates and dropped 121 entries, listed under Left out. Positions: 231 known, 238 approximate, 39 only within their region.
The seven images were made for X in the house style of the series, 3200 × 1800 pixels: the overview map with the number of battles per decade, Greece and the Aegean, Asia Minor and Cyprus enlarged, the record by opponent, and the list in four parts.
Every battle with its English and Greek name, date, war, place, coordinates, sides, allies, commanders, result, sources and notes, as a CSV table, as JSON, or as a spreadsheet with the record tables and the battles left out, with reasons; and the record alone as CSV.
Sources, cited battle by battle: English and Greek Wikipedia (battle articles, campaign boxes and categories) and Turkish Wikipedia for Turkish accounts; Trikoupis, Kolokotronis, Makrygiannis, Kasomoulis, Finlay and Gordon for the War of Independence; Kargakos; Perraivos for Souli; Vakalopoulos and Karamitsos for Macedonia; Hall, The Balkan Wars, and the histories of the Hellenic Army General Staff (ΓΕΣ/ΔΙΣ) for 1912–22 and 1940–41; Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision; Mazower, Woodhouse and Close for the occupation and the civil wars; the Greek embassy in Seoul and the Korean Institute for Military History for Korea; the EOKA calendar of the Digenis Foundation. Map: Natural Earth; today’s borders dashed.
Where the rules left room for judgement, this is how it was settled. The map, the record and the list follow the call shown; the alternative is given so that readers can weigh it.