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,[1] and was widely adopted across international lines and dominated formalized field warfare for more than a century.
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,[7] a trend he continued with most Catalan criminals for the rest of his reign.[8] 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 believed he could improve on the tercio by combining its methods with the organisation of the Roman legion. 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 Countries 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 tercio's 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 Mountain (1620), Fleurus (1622), Breda (1624), Nördlingen (1634), and Thionville (1639). It was not until the Rocroi (1643) that the Spanish tercio's 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.
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