Lecture 12: Tercios to Better Dutch Ideas: Seventeenth-Century Warfare and the Beginnings of Standing Armies

renaissance army

a. pikemen

b. missile troops

c. sword + bucklermen

d. gendarmes

e. light cav. (jinette, stadiotes)

f. artillery

(big change from hoplites w/ hoplites, slingers, archers)

another change will be economic

1. later middle ages brings increasingly stability

2. trade begins to develop/grow once more - and from it new wealth

• 1. merchants

• 2. manufacturers

manufactures formed guides = early trade unions which oversaw:

a. training

b. quality

c. prices

some towns (especially northern Italy) became so prosperous that

a. merchants and guilds ran them

b. they became independent of local feudal lords

england’s went a step farther - devising a representative body- parliament

a. lords (wealthy land-owners)

b. commons (merchants/guilds)

another change - fortifications

a. motte and bailey

b. stone castle

c. but tall, thin castle walls vulnerable to artillery

Italian renaissance engineers, began creating new defenses

a. low

b. earth-bound

angle bastions added to walls to

allow for crossfire

another change - military formations

a. orginally a pike block/square

b. now this will become a tercio

tercio - advantages

a. the look

b. protection of pikes by missiles

c. weight

tercio has:

a. pikeman

b. sword + buckermen

c. missile troops

main missile weapons =

the matchlock

spain, through its american conquests became dominant and wealth and so

their formation the tercio - became everyone’s formation for a little while

tercios are also:

a. slow and clumsy

b. masked ½ of its gunfire

from 1568-1648 (80 years war) the dutch struggled

to escape spanish control but always out spent and out numbered

a dutch general and noble maurice of nassua, invented new dutch formations to counter this

a. read ancient classics - used the roman triples acies

b. changed infantry lines to M P M so that firepower could be used (“the dutch system” allowed for greater flexibility as well)

1600, maurice defeated the spanish at nitewport and generals began

to see this as an alternate method of combat