The
Tercio ("one third"), also known as
Tercio Español, was a
Renaissance eraThe Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe...
military formation similar to and derivative of the Swiss
pike squareThe pike square was a military tactic developed by the Swiss Confederacy during the 15th century for use by its infantry.- History :...
and was a term used to describe a mixed
infantryInfantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of the Combat Arms they are the backbone of armies...
formation of about 3,000
pikemenA pike is a pole weapon, a very long thrusting spear used two-handed and used extensively by infantry both for attacks on enemy foot soldiers and as a counter-measure against cavalry assaults. Unlike many similar weapons, the pike is not intended to be thrown...
, swordsmen and
arquebusThe arquebus is an early muzzle-loaded firearm used in the 15th to 17th centuries. The word was originally modelled on the German: Hackenbüche, this produced haquebute...
iers in a mutually supportive formation; it was also sometimes referred to by other nations as a
Spanish Square after its introduction by the
SpanishSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
army, and was widely adopted across international lines and dominated formalized field warfare for more than a century.
History
The
Tercio Español was the product of the
Italian WarsThe Italian Wars, often referred to as the Great Italian Wars or the Great Wars of Italy in historical works, were a series of conflicts from 1494 to 1559 that involved, at various times, most of the city-states of Italy, the Papal States, most of the major states of Western Europe as well as the...
in which the Spanish general,
Gonzalo Fernández de CórdobaGonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, Duke of Terranova and Santangelo, also known simply as Gonzalo de Córdoba , was a Spanish general in the service of the reign, when it was rising to military pre-eminence...
, would reorganize the Spanish army throughout a series of conflicts at the end of the 15th and early 16th centuries, into a tactically unique combination of modern and medieval combined arms centered around armored infantry. This emphasis on the infantry was the result of Spain's great dependence on
muleA mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny...
s in daily life, which in turn resulted in an inability to raise large cavalry forces. It marked the transformation of medieval military institutions into the
early modernEarly modern Europe is the term used by historians to refer to a period in the history of Western Europe and its first colonies which spanned the centuries between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the late 15th century to the late 18th century...
combined-arms
name="Gush-02"
>Gush, ibid army. (See: Pike and Shot for an excellent description of the eventual formation.) Gonzalo Fernández, developed the
tercio to further increase the effectiveness of Spanish infantry against every manner of opposing infantry while remaining impervious to the dangers of a cavalry charge.
At first the army consisted of units of around 6000 men, called
coronelias, which by 1534 had been reduced into the
tercios of 3000 for increased mobility on the offensive.
Composition and Characteristics
Tercio, consisting largely of professional soldiers with superior discipline and fighting spirit, were well known on the European battlefield for their near-invincibility in combat during the 16th and 17th centuries. The formation was often feared by enemy troops because of the legendary determination of its soldiers in combat – its reputation was fully established at the
Battle of PaviaThe Battle of Pavia, fought on the morning of February 24, 1525, was the decisive engagement of the Italian War of 1521-26. A Spanish-Imperial army under the nominal command of Charles de Lannoy attacked the French army under the personal command of Francis I of France in the great hunting preserve...
(1525), in which the French king was captured. The 3000 men of a
tercio were armed with an assortment of weapons to deal with any enemy they faced on the battlefield - 1500 of them were equipped with pikes, 1000 kept the ancient short sword and javelin armament, and the remaining 500 were armed with arquebuses of the best and most portable type. In battle the pikemen formed squares with the sword-and-javelin men inside, and the arquebusiers, together with field artillery, assumed positions in between the squares to gain the best angles of fire on any enemies approaching the
tercio square.
In front of the square formations they would dig ditches or other fortifications to further disrupt a cavalry charge, against which they were essentially invulnerable. Even in battle against an opposing force of pikemen, the
tercio had the upper hand in terms of ranged firepower with the arquebusiers causing devastating casualties amongst the tightly packed pikemen as well as the fact that a pikeman, needing both hands to wield his pike, was essentially defenseless against the
tercio swordsmen. This organization served them well against both the German
LandsknechtLandsknechts were European, most often German, mercenary pikemen and supporting foot soldiers from the late 15th to the late 16th century, and achieved the reputation for being the universal mercenary of the European Renaissance.-Etymology:The term is from German, Land "land,...
and Swiss
Reisläufer, who both used similar, though less flexible structures. The inspiration for the tercios twelve companies and flexibility is considered to be the Roman legion and the Swiss armored pike.
Professionalism
Although other major powers adopted the formation, their armies fell short of the fearsome reputation of the Spanish, who possessed a core of professional, volunteer soldiers, which gave their officers and men an edge that was hard for other nations to match. That army was further supplemented by "an army of different nations", a reference to the fact that many of the troops were mercenaries (
LandsknechtLandsknechts were European, most often German, mercenary pikemen and supporting foot soldiers from the late 15th to the late 16th century, and achieved the reputation for being the universal mercenary of the European Renaissance.-Etymology:The term is from German, Land "land,...
) from
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
,
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
and the
WalloonWallonia , formally the Walloon Region , is the predominantly French-speaking southern region of Belgium. It makes up about 33% of the population and 55% of the territory of Belgium. Walloon Region is also the name given to the regional government of Wallonia...
territories of the Spanish Netherlands, as was a characteristic of European warfare of the 13th-18th centuries before the revolutionary levies in the
Napoleonic WarsThe Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts declared against Napoleon's French Empire and changing sets of European allies by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionized European armies and played...
. In the 16th and 17th centuries however, the core of Spanish armies were formed by Spanish subjects, and were frequently praised by others for their cohesiveness, superiority in discipline and overall professionalism.
Formations
Within the tercio
, ranks of pikemen arrayed themselves together into one large block (cuadro
), similar to a pike squareThe pike square was a military tactic developed by the Swiss Confederacy during the 15th century for use by its infantry.- History :...
. The arquebusiers were usually split up in several mobile groups called sleeves (mangas
) and deployed relative to the cuadro
, typically with one manga at each corner. By virtue of this combined-arms approach, the formation simultaneously enjoyed both the staying power of its pike-armed infantry, as well as the ranged firepower of its arquebusiers. In addition to its inherent ability to repulse cavalry and other units along its front, and the long-range firepower of its arquebusiers could also be easily reorganized to the flanks, making it a versatile in both offensive and defensive evolutions, as demonstrated by the success of the tercios
at Pavia in 1525.
Groups of tercios were typically arrayed in dragon-toothed formation (staggered—the leading edge of one unit level with the trailing edge of the preceding unit; see similar hedgehog defense concept). This enabled enfilade lines of fire and somewhat defiladed the army units themselves. Odd units alternated with even units, respectively one forward and one back, providing gaps for an unwary enemy to enter and outflank itself, where it would become subjected to the combined direct and raking cross fire fire from the guns of three separate tercios
.
Tercios
and the Spanish Empire
Tercios
were deployed all over Europe under the Habsburg EmperorsThe Spanish Empire was one of the largest empires in world history, and one of the first global empires. It included territories and colonies in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania, from the 15th century through—in the case of its African holdings—the latter portion of the 20th century...
, who were kings of both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Sometimes these later tercios
did not stick to the all-volunteer model of the regular Imperial Spanish army - when the Habsburg king Philip IIPhilip II may refer to:* Philip II of Macedon * Philip II of France * Philip II of Navarre * Philip II of Taranto * Philip II, Duke of Burgundy...
found himself in need of more troops, he raised a tercio
of CatalanThe Catalans are the people from, or with origins in Catalonia, an Autonomous Community in Spain. The inhabitants of the adjacent portion of southern France –known in Catalonia proper as Catalunya Nord, and in France as the Pays Catalan– are often included in this definition.-Extended concept:The...
criminals to fight in FlandersFlanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France, and the Netherlands...
, a trend he continued with most Catalan criminals for the rest of his reign. A large proportion of the Spanish army (which by the later half of the 16th century was entirely composed of tercio
units) was deployed in the Netherlands to quell the increasingly difficult rebellion against the Habsburgs, although ironically many units of Spanish tercios
became part of the problem rather than the solution when the time came to pay them. With the Spanish coffers depleted by constant warfare, unpaid tercio
units often turned mutinous - in April 1574, just after winning a major victory, unpaid tercios
mutinied and occupied the town of Antwerp||-||-||-||}Antwerp is a city and municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Antwerp province in Flanders, one of Belgium's three regions. Antwerp's total population is 472,071 and its total area is , giving a population density of 2,308 inhabitants per km²...
, threatening to sack the town if their demands were not met. Bereft of troops, and thus his authority, the Spanish leader on the scene met the tercios
demands.
Obsolescence
It was at the Battle of NieuwpoortThe Battle of Nieuwpoort, between a Dutch army under Maurice of Nassau and Francis Vere and a Spanish army under Albrecht of Austria, took place on July 2, 1600 near the present day Belgian city Nieuwpoort.-Campaign:...
(1600) that the first hint of the coming end of the tercios is to be had. The victor of Nieupoort, the Dutch count, Maurice of Nassau believed he could improve on the tercio
by combining its methods with the organisation of the Roman legionThe Roman legion is a term that can apply both as a translation of legio to the entire Roman army and also, more narrowly , to the heavy infantry that was the basic military unit of the ancient Roman army in the period of the late Roman Republic and the...
. These shallower linear formations brought a greater proportion of available guns to bear on the enemy simultaneously. The result was that the tercios at Nieuwpoort were badly damaged by the weight of Dutch firepower. Yet the Spanish army very nearly succeeded in spite of internal dissensions that had compromised its regular command. The Eighty Years' war in the
Low CountriesThe Low Countries, the historical region of de Nederlanden, are the countries on low-lying land around the delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers...
continued to be characterized by sieges of cities and forts, while field battles were of secondary importance. Nassau's reforms did not lead to a revolution in warfare, but he had created an army that could meet the tercios
on an even basis and pointed the way to future developments. During the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) tercio
formations began to suffer some serious defeats to more linear formations led by the Swedish king-general, Gustavus Adolphus. Yet throughout its history the tercios form and composition was never static as it evolved to meet the new challenges. Tercio formations employed by well trained troops with good cavalry support, continued to win major battles, as can be seen at the famous battles of
White MountainThe Battle of White Mountain, 8 November 1620 was an early battle in the Thirty Years' War in which an army of 15,000 Bohemians and mercenaries under Christian of Anhalt were routed by 27,000 men of the combined armies of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor under Charles Bonaventure de Longueval,...
(1620),
FleurusThe Battle of Fleurus of August 29, 1622 was fought between a Spanish army, and the Protestant Powers of the Holy Roman Empire in the Thirty Years' War. The bloody struggle left the Protestants mangled and the Spanish masters of the field.- Campaign :...
(1622), Breda (1624),
NördlingenThe Battle of Nördlingen was fought on 27 August or 6 September , 1634 during the Thirty Years' War...
(1634), and
ThionvilleOn June 7, 1639, a Spanish and Imperial relief column under Octavio Piccolomini lifted the siege lines around Thionville and destroyed the besieging French army under the Marquis de Feuquières.-Aftermath:...
(1639). It was not until the
RocroiThe Battle of Rocroi was fought on 19 May 1643, late in the Thirty Years' War. It resulted in a decisive victory of the French army under the Duc d'Enghien, against the Spanish army under General Francisco de Melo.-Prelude:...
(1643) that the Spanish tercios
reputation for invincibility in major battles was shattered. Even then, the Rocroi defeat was precipitated by the collapse of the supporting cavalry arm rather than the failure of the tercios
themselves, which had come close to besting the opposing infantry. Tercios continued to win important battles for a time after Rocroi and even after the Thirty Years war, but were already greatly modified from their older forms. By then, improvements in firearms and field artillery had given the new linear style a decided advantage. In response the later 17th century "tercios
" had adopted so much of the linear style's organisation and tactics as to little resemble the classic tercios of the previous century.