“The Battle of Sarantaporos was one of the battles that History will speak of,” wrote Leonidas Parasekouplos, the artillery chief of the Thessalian Army, to his wife in 1912. Greece indeed began its military campaign at the beginning of the 20th century with “iron” momentum and an irresistible offensive spirit. The campaigns of 1912-13 represented the culmination of the desires and efforts of an entire century.

Undoubtedly, the final outcome of the military struggles of the decade 1912-1922 did not satisfy the Greeks. The centenary of the Great Catastrophe serves as a reason for reflection and a new "visit" to these significant events. As Aristocles Aigidis, a journalist of Anatolian descent, astutely noted in 1934, 1922 marked the end of a (disrupted) “hundred-year war” between Greeks and Turks, which began in 1821.

However, viewed within a broader historical context, the magnitude of the Great Catastrophe is tempered. This is because Greece, in a very short period, made a tremendous qualitative leap, and from a discredited power (1897) it became a temporarily significant geopolitical player in the Near East (1920).

The analysis of the developments of this wartime decade primarily relies on the comments of the Times of London and the Revue des Deux Mondes (the French journal of the arts, literature, and also international politics, which was highly regarded and influential at that time in Europe and America). The memoirs and analyses of prominent Greek officials (such as Victor Dousmanis, Leonidas Parasekouplos, Ioannis Metaxas, Prince Andrew, Cleantes Boulałas, etc.) also serve as a crucial source for the study at hand.