Tercio (pike-and-shot infantry)
Tercio (infantería de pica y arcabuz)
- Date
- 1534-1536 · confidence medium
- Place
- Genoa, Liguria, Italy
- Credited to
- Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba (precedents) and Charles V (ordinances)
- Field
- Conflict
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
An infantry unit of 3,000 men combining pikemen, arquebusiers and sword-and-buckler troops in square formations, with professional officers and permanent logistics. It dominated European battlefields for more than a century, until Rocroi (1643).
The tercios were instituted by the Ordinance of Genoa of 1536, but Gonzalo de Córdoba's 'coronelías' (Cerignola, 1503) and the Lombard tercios (1534) are the antecedents; historians debate how innovative they were compared with German pike and shot.
What it led to
- Spanish military hegemony of the 16th-17th centuries
- Maurice of Nassau's pike-and-musket infantry
- European standing armies