Author: stevenattewell

The Tercio

What is the tericco?

The tercio was a Spanish infantry formation that was highly effective during the Early Modern era of “pike and shot,” and a big part of the reason why the Spanish were so dominant in European warfare in this period.

In essence, the tercio was a tightly-packed, well-drilled square formation of mixed pikemen, musketeers, and swordsmen, designed to be extremely durable and very hard to be broken by cavalry. The pikemen would protect the musketeers from cavalry, and the musketeers would in turn direct their firepower at opposing pike, while the swordsmen would be used to attack weakened formations or to fill any gaps in the line. On the battlefield, the Spanish would field multiple tercios in a kind of checkerboard fashion that allowed the tercios to support one another with enfilade fire against enemy units, making them incredibly daunting to assault in hand-to-hand combat. 

(credit to Milgesch)

But more than just a clever formation and use of mixed arms, the Spanish tercio was dominant because Spanish soldiers were experienced professionals with incredible discipline, executing the complex drill of the tercio (where lines of pike and musketeers had to move past one another repeatedly) in the most difficult of circumstances, and keeping their lines together even after absorbing hideous amounts of casualties, which often allowed them to exhaust their opponents.

Gradually, the tercio became obsolete as other strategies evolved to deal with the dominant Spanish. Because of how close-packed and thus slow-moving the tercios were, they were incredibly vulnerable to massed firepower, both from infantry and artillery. For example, Maurice, Prince of Orange moved his armies into longer, thinner lines that could bring more guns to bear on the enemy than square blocks where the sides and rear couldn’t always fire, and found success at the Battle of Nieuwpoort. Likewise, the Duc d’Enghien at the Battle of Rocroi used a combination of superior cavalry to encircle the tercio and massed artillery to blast them to pieces. 

How is it that the Vale has so many houses going into debt? And is this only a phenomenon affecting the nobility of the Vale or could there be other forces at play here (eg. Littlefinger)?

I don’t think it’s Littlefinger, he’s more of an opportunist taking advantage of the situation than bringing it about. More, I think it has to do with the Vale’s obsession with honor culture demanding that the nobility keep up with the Joneses even if they can’t afford to, and the fact that unless you’re in the Vale proper, you’re likely to be ruling over marginal land with limited revenue. 

Hi Maester Steven, lover your blog. From time to time both in ASOIAF and in actual history, I see references to ‘the [adjective] Marches’ or ‘[noun] of the [adjective] Marches’. What exactly are ‘marches’, in this context? A general term for border regions, or something more specific? And how did this concept get this name? Thanks.

Marches do indeed refer to border regions and the lords who live in them are called marcher lords (or marquesses or margraves, etc. depending on the language). 

Because Marcher Lords were expected to defend the frontiers of the realm against raids and full-scale invasions, they were given certian legal privileges. For example, Marcher Lords tended to be direct vassals of the king with no intermediary liege lords; they had the right to build castles, which otherwise required a license from the king; they had powers to wage war in their regions without seeking permission from the king; they had administrative and judicial autonomy (for example, they could grant charters that otherwise were the prerogative of kings), and had the exclusive right to “any and every feudal due, aid, grant, and relief" from their vassals instead of kicking those bennies up to the king, giving them the revenue needed to maintain their castles and armies.

In essence, you can think of marches as semi-militarized border zones where the central authority has ceded certain powers to the local authorities in a bid to get them to settle in and raise castles in very dangerous regions so that they can provide the central authority with a dedicated first line of defense. 

Do you think The Night’s King on the show has anything to do with The Night’s King from the books? My interpretation of the book character is that he made common cause with The Others, but he was never their equal, let alone their leader: he was their slave.

Basically, nothing but the name. The Night’s King in the books was a human being and not a White Walker, and he had a very particular story of hubris, temptation, tyranny, and overthrow that the enigmatic figure in the show completely lacks. 

However, I think it is absolutely vaulting past the evidence to say that he was the slave of the White Walkers. Rather, he seems to have been some form of ally, marrying into the family with his corpse queen, and engaging in some form of religious communion via human sacrifice.