Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/y6zolb86gm
Trogir noblemen Michieli Vitturi – highly ranked officers of the Venetian overseas land units in the second half of the 18th century
Lovorka Čoralić
orcid.org/0000-0002-9333-7221
; Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb, Croatia
Nikola Markulin
; Zadar, Croatia
Abstract
The central theme of the paper is focused on the part of the military career of the children from the Trogir noble family of Michieli Vitturi: Colonel Vick (born in 1754), his cousin Lieutenant- Colonel Nikola (born in 1721), and Nikola’s son, Captain Jerolim Franjo (born in 1755). They all served as officers of the Venetian overseas land units (Fanti oltramarini) in the last decades and years of the Venetian Republic rule. The work is based on the reading and analysis of material kept in the State Archives in Zadar (the Governors-General of Dalmatia and Albania and the Zanchi Family Holdings), and above all the material from the State Archives in Venice ( the holdings of Inquisitori sopra l’amministrazione dei pubblici ruoli). In the first section of the paper, mostly based on the existing knowledge of historiography, the primary biographical data about the family of Michaeli Vitturi is briefly presented. Then the military careers of Colonel Vick, Lt. Col. Nikola and Captain Jerolim Franjo are discussed in the order corresponding to the height of their military rank. Particular attention is paid to the Venetian registers of their military personnel, and the structure of individual regiments and their pertaining companies is presented. Furthermore, an essential component of the paper is the comment (given through percentage calculations and graph displays) on the native origin of thecompany soldiers commanded by the mentioned above members of the Michieli Vitturi’s family. Our analysis indicates that - with the expected predominance of soldiers from Dalmatia- members of territorial forces (cernide) were occasionally operating in some of the companies. They, however, were attached to the professional structure of infantry units due to the war turbulence in the north of the Apennine Peninsula at the very end of the Venetian Republic. These were mostly ordinary soldiers from the rural parts of Istria (Buzet region of Karst) and Dalmatia (villages in the Zadar hinterland, the area of Neretva and others). We believe that the study of their names and surnames, thanks to the well-kept registers, are an additional contribution to the knowledge of local communities from the Istrian north to Boka Kotorska. The final section of the paper presents several complete lists of military personnel of the troops commanded by three Venetian officers from the Michieli Vitturi family.
Keywords
Michieli Vitturi family; Trogir; Venetian Republic; Venetian overseas infantry; cernide; military history; 18th-century history
Hrčak ID:
230730
URI
Publication date:
20.12.2019.
Visits: 2.566 *