Kotor Aristocrat Franjo Buća – Commander of the Croatian Cavalry within the Venetian Military Units in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

It is a generally known fact, which is supported by the sources, that Croats were participating in Venetian overseas military units for the entire centuries-long rule of the Serenissima over the Eastern Adriatic. However, this aspect of the eighteenth-century relations between Venice and Croats remained relatively less researched. This paper, which is based on the research of unpublished sources from the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (archival series Inquisitori sopra l’amministrazione dei pubblici ruoli, that is, the central Venetian office in charge of military recruitment), is a follow-up of a yearslong research aimed at presenting both the participation of soldiers coming from particular Croatian regions and places and the participation of distinguished military officers in the professional infantry (Fanti oltramarini) and cavalry units (Cavalleria Croati, Croati a cavallo). This time, the research focuses on the decades-long service of a prominent officer, a Kotor aristocrat Franjo Buća (Bucchia), who gradually progressed through officer ranks (initially, he was a captain, then a major, a lieutenant colonel and a colonel, sargente maggiore di battaglia and finally, the supreme commander of entire Croatian cavalry) from his early youth at the beginning of the eighteenth century to the 1770s. The paper analyzes the lists of the military complement of Buća’s regiment, with particular attention confined to the companies which were attached to him and were under his personal command. The paper is accompanied by the complete lists of soldiers within Buća’s companies in different periods of his service who held different military ranks. The paper aims to contribute to a better knowledge of both the eighteenth-century relations between Croats and Venice and the military history of Dalmatia and the Gulf of Kotor (Boka Kotorska) in the period covered by the research.