The Spanish soldiers would be recruited for service in Italy for a few years, an attractive prospect for most (contemporary Spanish sources note that the soldiers became ‘addicted’ to Italy for its climate, wine, women and easy loot).
Able soldiers could make a career in the tercios and become officers, even Maestres de campo. The Spanish army was essentially an expeditionary army for Italy, Germany, Flanders and the colonies. If available, they are shown in the separate Unit Histories of the listed tercios. Each bandera had its own flag as well these banderas capitanas were usually about 1.7 by 1.7 meters. Some of the tercio ensigns and banderas and the coats of arms of some Maestres de campo have been preserved. The Royal ensign of a white field with a red Burgundian cross, the tercio ensign and the bandera coronela (ensign of the Maestre de campo) measured 2.5 x 2.5 meters. The flags of the tercio were always carried by the pike bloc, usually in the middle rank(s). A tercio was commanded by a Maestre de Campo who had an honour guard of eight halberdiers and who was assisted by a Sargente Mayor and a host of minor officials including clerics. Most tercios had a territorial base after which they were named. The tercios had a permanent staff, a veteran core and an esprit de corps which gave them a distinct edge on all battlefields. Juan de Valencia, Catálogo histórico-descriptivo de la Real Armería de Madrid, 1898 The basic fighting unit of the Spanish infantry was a mixed formation of pike and shot called escuadrón, often described in foreign sources as the ‘Spanish square’.ġ5th century capacete.
On the battlefield some tercios would operate on their own as fighting units, but more often they were combined (or sometimes split) into fighting units specifically adapted to local circumstance. This is important to keep in mind if you want to understand contemporaneous sources. The tercio was 3.000-strong and it was an administrative unit, not a battlefield formation. It was replaced by the regiment on the French model. The tercio was only abolished in 1704 by a Royal Ordinance from King Philip V. Spanish commanders (in particular the brilliant Captain Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba) found that a judicious combination of pikes and shot could withstand both. The coronelía had been the answer to the double threat which Spain had encountered in the Italian wars: the Swiss Gewalthaufen (pike blocs) and the French heavy cavalry. The tercio developed around 1530 out of an earlier batlefield formation, the coronelía, a 6000-strong unit of pikemen and harquebusiers with some halberdiers and sword-and-buckler men thrown in. The core of the Spanish army was the infantry, and the core of the infantry were the shock troops called tercios. Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, engraving 1513