The history of Greece from the fall of the Roman Empire to the birth of the modern Greek state is an endless series of conflicts and contrasts between tribes, cultures, and religions: between Greeks and Slavs; between Franks, Italians, Catalans, and Turks; between Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and Muslims.

Knights from the West jousted, surrounded by the ruins of antiquity, while Venetian and Turkish galleys clashed in the waters of the Aegean. After describing the invasions of the Goths and Slavs and the survival and redefinition of Greek identity within the context of Byzantium, Nicolas Cheetham examines the Frankish occupation in Greece after the Fourth Crusade of 1204, when Franks and Italians divided Greece among themselves and established competing dynasties.

He describes how princes from Champagne, dukes from Burgundy, Catalan adventurers, and Florentine bankers held power in the Peloponnese and Athens and how the Greeks, led by the Kantakouzenoi and the Palaiologos from Byzantium, reclaimed their country, only to lose it again shortly thereafter to the Turks.

Although a multitude of studies have been dedicated to the feudal era, very few pieces of this knowledge have reached the broader reading public. For most people, the Middle Ages in the Greek territory are a blank period. This book aims to fill this gap and present the essential historical facts without leading the reader into an overly dense labyrinth of names, dates, and events.