Tercio

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
This article has been tagged since December 2006.

The Battle of Pavia (1525)

Tercio (Also known as "Spanish Tercios") was a term used by the Spanish army to describe a mixed infantry formation of about 3,000 pikemen and musketeers, sometimes referred to by other nations as a Spanish Square. It was a formalisation of the organisation and fighting techniques that had been developed principally by Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, during the Italian Wars. It marked the transformation of medieval military institutions into the early modern combined-arms army with a focus on infantry.

Tercios, 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.^{[citation needed]} 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 prospect of being thrown into battle against the Spanish tercios was even known to lead to desertions in opposing forces.^{[citation needed]}

Although other major powers adopted the formation, their armies fell short of the fearsome reputation of the Spanish. That army, however, was not made up entirely of Spaniards, but was "an army of different nations", many of the troops being mercenaries (Landsknecht) from Germany, Italy and the Walloon territories of the Spanish Netherlands.^{[citation needed]} However, the Spanish formed the core, noted by others for their superiority in discipline and professionalism. Their professionalism was displayed in the Battle of Rocroi in 1643, when the German and Walloon tercios fled from the battlefield, while the Spanish stayed on the field with their commander, absorbing four cavalry charges by the French, but never breaking the formation notwithstanding heavy assistance of artillery. Young Enghien, the French commander then offered surrender conditions just like those obtained by a besieged garrison into a fortress. Having agreed to those terms the remains of the two tercios left the field with deployed flags and weapons.^{[citation needed]}

Within the tercio, ranks of pikemen arrayed themselves together into one large block (carré). The musketeers were usually split up in several mobile groups (mangas) and deployed relative to the carré, typically with one manga at each corner.^{[citation needed]} By virtue of this combined-arms approach, the formation simultaneously enjoyed both the rigidity of its heavy infantry and the long-range firepower of its musketeers, making it an ideal defensive and offensive formation.

The end of the tercio's dominance on the battlefield came with the decisive defeat of the The Catholic League's army under Johann Tserclaes at the first Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631 by the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus, who organized his troops in more flexible linear formations. This had been made possible by improvements to the range and accuracy of firearms. Though tercio formations continued to be used with effect, such as at the Battle of Nördlingen (1634), the trend to the new linear formations was confirmed by increasing successes such as the French victory at Rocroi in 1643. In the late 17th century, the Spanish army abandoned the then-obsolete tercio in favour of the more flexible system of battalions and regiments, based on the French model.^{[citation needed]} This new system of fighting in linear formation, which had been promoted by the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus in the 17th century, dominated the 18th century battlefield. The linear formation relied on shock force more than any other element: soldiers would fire their muskets simultaneously, demoralizing the enemy force.^{[citation needed]} The tercios proved inadequate to withstand this new formation, which was more organised and whose thin lines sustained fewer casualties by cannon fire.^{[citation needed]}