Gjergj Bashta, the world-famous arborist general

The Center for Studies and Publications for Arbëresh commemorated on the 417th anniversary of the death of the strategist, military theorist and general of European and world fame, of Arbëresh origin, Gjergj Bashta.

He was born in 1544 in Rocaforcata (Roccaforzata), near Taranto, in a family with military traditions.

At a very young age he became part of the military guilds that arose under the Ottoman occupation under the name "stratiotes" that served in the Venetian possessions, in the Italian states under the armies of the German empire in France, Flanders, etc.

Gjergj Bashta completed his studies in the city of Asti, Italy. Organized, directed and conducted many battles and battles as commander-in-chief of the Spanish armies in Belgium, the Netherlands and France and of the German armies in Hungary, in the Balkan mountains, in Transylvania against the Ottoman armies. Bashta was the conductor of the tradition of using and leading the light cavalry of Skanderbeg's army in Italy, in the European armies of the century. XVI–XVII. In a letter from 1759, the Himariots, after the names of Pyrrhus and Skenderbeu, wrote the name of Gjergj Bashta.

In 1907, the Albanians of the USA, in a letter addressed to the Hague Conference, mentioned General Gjergj Bashta in addition to prominent figures of our people.

Bashta's name became known to Albanian science and readers when the historian Dhimitër Pilika took it out of the Prague archives and published it in the magazine "Ylli" in 1966, in its 7th issue.

Gjergj Bashta wrote three theoretical and practical military works, which were recognized in Europe: "Il maestro di campo generale" (Master of the general camp) in 1606; "Governo della cavalleria leggera" (On the direction of the light cavalry), in 1612 and "On the direction of the artillery", in 1612.

He died in the town of Quartre, Belgium, and was ceremoniously buried in the Church of the Holy Cross in Vienna in 1607.