Tercio

For the bullfighting term, see Spanish-style bullfighting; for a more general article on early combined arms practices, see Pike and shot.

The Tercio ("one third"), also known as Tercio Español, was a Renaissance era military formation similar to and derivative of the Swiss Pike square and was a term used to describe a mixed infantry formation of about 3,000 pikemen, swordsmen and arquebusiers in a mutually supportive formation; it was also sometimes referred to by other nations as a Spanish Square after its introduction by the Spanish army, and was widely adopted across international lines and dominated formalized field warfare for several centuries.

The Battle of Pavia (1525)

History

The Tercio Español was the product of the Great Italian Wars in which the Spanish general, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, 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 mules 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 modern combined-arms 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

Surrender of Breda by Velázquez, shows Ambrosio Spinola, commander of the Spanish Tercio receiving the keys to the city from the defeated Dutch general in 1621.

Tercio, consisting largely of professional soldiers with superior discipline and fighting spirit, were well known on the European battlefield for their nigh-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 Pavia (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 (Landsknecht) swordsmen and Swiss pikemen. The inspiration for the Tercio's 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 (Landsknecht) from Germany, Italy and the Walloon territories of the Spanish Netherlands, as was a characteristic of European warfare of the 13th-18th centuries before the revolutionary levies in the Napoleonic Wars. 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 square. 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 Emperors, 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 II found himself in need of more troops, he raised a Tercio of Catalan criminals to fight in Flanders, 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, 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 Nieuwpoort (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, had carefully studied the strengths of the tercios by tracing the formation's history throughout its employment in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe where it had earned its reputation for invincibility. The count believed that, not only could he employ the formation himself, he could improve it. By studying the tactics of the Roman legion, Maurice divided the pike and musketeer formations into smaller groups of 80 men, in contrast to the Tercio's groups of 1,200-1,500 to further increase the rate of fire of his musketeers. By rotating his men to the rear after each shot to allow for loaded men to take their comrades' positions Maurice created a constant fire when fighting the Spanish tercios, who could only bring one line of muskets to bear along a smaller front than the Dutch could, due to their shallower formations. The Spanish tercios at Nieuwpoort were badly damaged by the weight of Dutch firepower. Yet an analysis of the battle shows that the Spanish army, though the effectiveness of its command was seriously compromised by dissensions from mutinous units, almost succeeded in spite of itself, and caused serious damage to its Dutch opponent. The Eighty Years' war in the Low Countries continued to be characterised 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 when tercio formations were employed by well trained troops with good cavalry support, they continued to win major battles, as can be seen at the battles of White Mountain (1620) and Nördlingen (1634). It was not until the Rocroi (1643) that the Spanish tercio's reputation for invincibility in major battles was shattered; even then, the 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. It was only in the late 17th century, owing to improvements in firearms and field artillery that gave the linear style a decided advantage, the Spanish army was finally reluctantly persuaded that the old tercio formation had outlived its usefulness and so adopted the linear formations itself. Thereafter the term "Tercio" lived on as a formal title for military units rather than being a reference to a distinct type of military formation.

See Also

World History of Warfare By Christon I. Archer, John R. Ferris, Holger H. Herwig, Timothy H. E. Travers - For a history of Spanish arms in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Davies, T. R. (1961). The Golden Century of Spain 1501-1621. London: Macmillan & Co. - Brief description of the birth of the Spanish Tercio.

Notes and reference links

• Renaissance Armies: The Spanish (myArmoury.com article)
• Spanish web site— Honors Alonso Pita da Veiga the most heroic Spaniard at the Battle of Pavia (Italy) 1525.
• Non-Official Web site of the Modern "Spanish Marines" (in existence since 1537 few years after Battle of Pavia (Italy) 1525 and well before the Battle of Lepanto (Greece) 1571).
• Non-Official Web site of the Modern "Spanish Tercios" inheritors of those who fought in the Battle of Pavia (Italy) 1525, and the Battle of Lepanto (Greece 1571).