Spanish Tercios - Literature on the Focus on Individual Marksmanship?

[Guderian2nd]

I've often heard it mentioned that during the 16th~17th century, the Spanish Armies trained their soldiers handling firearms to focus on individual aimed shots at single targets and other accuracy-oriented training, similar to those of Japan. It is often mentioned in the context of firepower vs shock; ie. the Spanish even went as far to put sights on many of their firearms and could inflict casualties from distances over 200 yards away, where as the other armies like the Swedes or the Dutch instead focused more delivering shock in massed volleys rather than accuracy, and that the victory of the latter over the former proved the superiority of shock over continuous accurate firepower on the battlefield.

However, it is my understanding that more recent scholarship has cast doubt on the whole matter of the Swedes or the Dutch overcoming the Spanish tercios through superior linear tactics; rather, it has come to light that the Spanish were already well-utilizing many of the supposed elements of linear tactics that would be attributed to the Military Revolution before the Swedes or the Dutch, things such as massed volley fire, individual small units below the size of 500, flexible linear deployment, etc. They were not the most powerful and effective army in Europe by having outdated tactics, even well in to the mid-17th century.

If so, that casts doubt on the idea that the Spanish trained to focus on individual sharpshooting than delivering volleys even as late as the 30 years war. Does anyone know of any good academic literature that casts light on the subject, where the supposed focus on individual marksmanship is elaborated upon?

 

[Ironanvil1]

I'd taken it that it wasn't so much that the Spanish trained for individual fire, as that aimed individual fire was the method that troops would default to. You instead had to train them to engage in rapid-loading volley-fire.

 

[PraiseVectron]

That makes sense. This isn't the era of standardized training for standardized rifles. This is the era of stealing windows from peasants so the solders can turn the lead frames into hand-cast bullets.

 

[Guderian2nd]

I'd taken it that it wasn't so much that the Spanish trained for individual fire, as that aimed individual fire was the method that troops would default to. You instead had to train them to engage in rapid-loading volley-fire.

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Well, I'd rather imagine that firing horribly(like with your eyes closed and without proper stabilization) was the default; you also have to train your troops a particular way to get them to shoot accurately individually, just as much as you have to train your troops to fire in volleys. Ex. the Japanese.

 

[Jonen C]

AFAIK Sweden at the time ownership of guns was fairly common and people used them for hunting.

Now, not all the recruits would be proficient hunters, but it'd be not unusual.
So training away bad habits, and teaching drill for synchronized volleys and fast reloading would make sense as the priority.

 

[Ironanvil1]

Well, I'd rather imagine that firing horribly(like with your eyes closed and without proper stabilization) was the default; you also have to train your troops a particular way to get them to shoot accurately individually, just as much as you have to train your troops to fire in volleys. Ex. the Japanese.

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AFAIK Sweden at the time ownership of guns was fairly common and people used them for hunting.

Now, not all the recruits would be proficient hunters, but it'd be not unusual.
So training away bad habits, and teaching drill for synchronized volleys and fast reloading would make sense as the priority.

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That was my thought on it as well, that the people most likely to be enrolled as shot would be those with prior experience of firearms, most probably in a hunting context.

 

[Yeangst]

Soldiers and mercenaries in the 16th and 17th centuries weren't 'dregs of the earth' who enlisted because they had no other options or conscripts given 2 months training and thrown in the meatgrinder like the 18th and 19th centuries, respectively. They were trained professionals with years of training and fighting experience under their belts. Musketeers and Arquebusiers would probably have spent more time in sieges and skirmishes than open field battles, where individual aimed fire was more important than massed volleys.

 

[Ironanvil1]

Soldiers and mercenaries in the 16th and 17th centuries weren't 'dregs of the earth' who enlisted because they had no other options or conscripts given 2 months training and thrown in the meatgrinder like the 18th and 19th centuries, respectively. They were trained professionals with years of training and fighting experience under their belts. Musketeers and Arquebusiers would probably have spent more time in sieges and skirmishes than open field battles, where individual aimed fire was more important than massed volleys.

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They also wouldn't spring forth from dragon's teeth as fully experienced troops, but would draw on their cultural experience of hunting for military usage of firearms, that forming the basis of the initial military culture, that only later developing into coordinated fire, as reloading speeded and the cost of gunpowder became more viable to expend it in larger quantities.

 

[xa na xa]

Soldiers and mercenaries in the 16th and 17th centuries weren't 'dregs of the earth' who enlisted because they had no other options or conscripts given 2 months training and thrown in the meatgrinder like the 18th and 19th centuries, respectively. They were trained professionals with years of training and fighting experience under their belts. Musketeers and Arquebusiers would probably have spent more time in sieges and skirmishes than open field battles, where individual aimed fire was more important than massed volleys.

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I don't think your general distinctions between 16th/17th and 17th/18th combatants hold.

A hillbardier in the Thirty Years War could have as little as a couple week between walking in a tavern whith recruiters plying him with a lot of free drinks and finding himself on a battlefield.

During that time he would have been drilled maybe a dozen basic hillbard moves and line formations.

On the other hand of scale, there were consumate professional mercenaries, with decades of experience, and not caring if the money came from Wallenstein or Richelieu. Scots and Irish carreer mercenaries were the most common "non-belligerent nationality" during the Thirty Years War.

Mercenaries and professional soldiers were just as much a mainstay of 18th century warfare (see "Hessians") than of 17th. The real watershed is the 19th century, with the widespread introduction of conscription.

Siege warfare was as important and similar in the 18th century than as the 17th and 16th, they were all the period of Vauban and the trace italienne. Fortifications lost importance in Napoleonic post-Napoleonic times because of the better logistics of field armies, and their mass armies making it easier to overwhem forts with sheer size.

The one difference was that firearms were more expensive and complicated, leading to people fighting with such having better status and better pay.

The French mousquetaires were an example of that.

As a comparison with our previous hillbardier, an arquebusier would be drilled in substantially more movements just for the handling of his arquebuse, before counting battlefield evolutions .

As muskets and bayonets replaced previous arms, these distinctions disappeared.

 

[bookwyrm]

Wouldn't that halberdier with his few weeks of drills be sent to the back of the line to "learn on the job" and be basically the band's intern until he was deemed sufficiently experienced to brave the vanguard, or assault the walls, or whatever?

 

[Jonen C]

... I am reminded to note that during the thirty years war a number of armies had discipline issues among pikemen who would "misplace" their pikes so as to not have to march with the ungainly things, and in any case attempt to acquire an arquebus because arquebusiers got paid more.

 

[Ironanvil1]

... I am reminded to note that during the thirty years war a number of armies had discipline issues among pikemen who would "misplace" their pikes so as to not have to march with the ungainly things, and in any case attempt to acquire an arquebus because arquebusiers got paid more.

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It bears remembering that for a long time, a firearm was a fairly complex to operate technical doodad filled with explosives, and with a lit slow match attached to it, used in proximity to other quantities of explosive - you kind of wanted competent people in charge of them, and it was worth paying for it to try and avoid unfortunate booms.