The Spanish Tercios. Discussion: Hispanic Gothicism vs Germanic Gothicism [split]

[Señor Malo]

Ludmann says that A-M in southern Netherland comes from the spanish Tercios; what about the neolithic coastal populations ? ? ?

[Waarnemer]

Originally Posted by searcher of truth

Ludmann says that A-M in southern Netherland comes from the spanish Tercios; what about the neolithic coastal populations ? ? ?

where did he say that?

[Breogan]

Originally Posted by searcher of truth

Ludmann says that A-M in southern Netherland comes from the spanish Tercios;[...]

Come on, boy

This kind of statements reminds me to nordicist-retardism, white history and anything like that

[Visigodo]

Originally Posted by searcher of truth

Ludmann says that A-M in southern Netherland comes from the spanish Tercios; what about the neolithic coastal populations ? ? ?

He didn't say that. What he said is what I pointed in the previous post something more than two years ago.

Lundman wrote that in the south of Holland there are weak Mediterranean and Alpine strains and specially also in the Flemish population in Belgium.

What he exactly wrote was:

The non-Frisian Dutch population is racially more Faelish-Nordid in the north of Holland. In the south of Holland there are weak Mediterranean and Alpine strains. This is also true of the Flemish population in Belgium. In addition, we find Litoral strains in many places on the Atlantic coast of western Europe.


I simply asked a question to the forum.

Coming from the spanish "Tercios"?


It is known that the crown contemplated the marriages of our men in Italy and Flanders, among the troop as well as among the officers, like a source of problems. The commentators thought that the family weakened the soldier and distracted them from the service. There was even a late ordinance that prohibited the soldiers to marry (unfortunately probably we got lost good blood because descendant lack as losses during the wars). So it was even established norms that regulated the use of prostitutes. And there were possibly a lot of sexual contacts with the local population. If this has been able to influence or not in certain mediterranean strains in the areas where they stay that it is pure speculation but I thought at that time that some influence they could have left since Lundman wrote only about weak mediterranean strains. Anyway just some speculations.

[Señor Malo]

Originally Posted by Visigodo

He didn't say that...
I simply asked a question to the forum.

ok; ooooops, sorry Visigodo...
and sorry Mr Lundman whereever you are now

Originally Posted by Visigodo

Anyway just some earlier speculations.

Not a bad speculation though I'd assume the impact might havebeen limited as the number of spanish officers and soldiers acting er...inapropiately (Bill linton recomended me to use this word...wander why ) with local populaton shoud have been less important than those of the older strains which at their moment represneted whole populations

If the portraits of Mr Huygens are accurate A-M strains in Netherlands are older than that (no trace of spanish tercio ancestry in Huygens family as far as I know)

http://forum.stirpes.net/racial-clas...-huyghens.html


PS: did you know that Bill Clinton is an expert in racial classification?

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Visigodo

I simply asked a question to the forum.

Coming from the spanish "Tercios"?


It is known that the crown contemplated the marriages of our men in Italy and Flanders, among the troop as well as among the officers, like a source of problems. The commentators thought that the family weakened the soldier and distracted them from the service. There was even a late ordinance that prohibited the soldiers to marry (unfortunately probably we got lost good blood because descendant lack as losses during the wars). So it was even established norms that regulated the use of prostitutes. And there were possibly a lot of sexual contacts with the local population. If this has been able to influence or not in certain mediterranean strains in the areas where they stay that it is pure speculation but I thought at that time that some influence they could have left since Lundman wrote only about weak mediterranean strains. Anyway just some speculations.

What's the source of this?

We had a related discussion some time ago, where I noticed that you presumed that the average soldier of the glorious Spanish Tercios were mostly of Gothic descent. I'll say here the same thing that I told you then:

Having served in the army in a time when it was not a bed of roses and a complete waste like it is today, and in a unit which was considered as elite and hard enough to provoke serious psychiatric problems and even suicides, I can assure you that the soldiers there would have eaten up the world if they had been ordered to do so.

Most of my comrades there did not come from accommodated social classes, but from the roughest neighbourhoods or from small villages. One would assume then that the pay was what made the unit and the longer term attractive to those men, as opposed to the symbolic pay that the men serving in conscripted units had. But again, it was only a little less miserable and it would only allow us to afford one or two days and nights out per month.. if we were lucky to be allowed out. And you can be sure that the background of the Spanish soldiers of the Tercios was at large similar to those, in a different time.


But never mind, let me ask you this. You say: "There was even a late ordinance that prohibited the soldiers expressly to marry (unfortunately probably we got lost good blood because descendant lack as losses during the wars)."

I have never heard of such an ordinance. Not that I say that it didn't exist, but I would like to see it. Are you sure that you are not referring to the ordinance that forbid the soldiers to carry their families around with the Tercios?

By the way, look what I found in this forum of Galician genealogy. Anything in squared brackets are my comments:

In Pontedeume [a small parish in Galicia], in the book of baptized of 1752 I found a big number of children from soldiers of the Tercios. The fathers were Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish, married with women from other countries as well as from Spain (I believe that from Lleida [Catalonia] and also some from Galicia); many of the godfathers were the officers in command. The parties are well detailed with regards to the place of origin of the fathers and of the military grade, among which I remember one Purcell from Ireland and one Meylan, who was from Florence, married to Lorena Fernández, from Pontedeume.

Forums-viewtopic-Los hijos de los Tercios

Also interesting to a discussion about the Tercios, it would be to classify El Gran Capitán, don Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, the second son of the 5th Lord of Aguilar de la Frontera and of a noble lady who was the great-grandauther of the Infante don Fadrique Alfonso of Castille, and a Knight of the Order of Santiago.

He was the man who designed the military reform that gave way to the invincible Tercios and which kept them invincible for nearly two hundred years, and who defeated France on many battles winning Italy to Spain.

Originally Posted by searcher of truth

Not a bad speculation though I'd assume the impact might havebeen limited as the number of spanish officers and soldiers acting er...inapropiately (Bill linton recomended me to use this word...wander why ) with local populaton shoud have been less important than those of the older strains which at their moment represneted whole populations

The Tercios, like other armies before them, did count with a number of barraganas. This was a word used exclusively to define the prostitutes in the military service.

Although they stayed invincible for nearly 200 years (at least the Spanish companies which were the elite and the vanguard of the Tercios), they weren't exempt of problems.

One such were rebelions caused by the money paid to the soldiers which arrived late more often than not. And by late I don't mean a few weeks, but months and even around a year. This was the cause that ignited now few problems and rebelions, which lead to abuses over the civilian population.

However, having said that, it is also fair to say that the men known for rebelling at the late pay were the Landskenets, German mercenaries of the Tercios. They were too used for acts such as the Sack of Rome.

In the book of Alatriste, when a Spanish captain hears the complaints of some Spanish soldiers because they had not had been paid in months and had not had clothes to change, he asks if "we are Tudescos (Germans) who have to get paid before fighting, or Spanish soldiers". End of argument.

If the portraits of Mr Huygens are accurate A-M strains in Netherlands are older than that (no trace of spanish tercio ancestry in Huygens family as far as I know)

To a lesser extent, The Netherlands is still a western lands and the Atlantic Mediterranid types are probably older than any Nordid or other type arrived from the East.

[Visigodo]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

What's the source of this?

Please buy and read TERCIOS DE ESPAÑA by Fernando Martínez Laínez and José María Sánchez de Toca y Catalá. The last man is Infantry General and diplomated from the “Estado Mayor” who has served in several destinies in Europa and Africa. Former president of the “Comité Alfa” and General of the Salamandre division in Bosnia. Co-author on the Spanish edition of the Historia de la Infantería Española and has puplished several articles in Defensa y Ejercito, Military Review and Rivista Militare.

We had a related discussion some time ago, where I noticed that you presumed that the average soldier of the glorious Spanish Tercios were mostly of Gothic descent. I'll say here the same thing that I told you then:

I am not sure or just can not remember that I have said that but if I said such statement probably was because my Gothicism (that is not the same as Nordicism as you know ) and some beer’s effect make me say that. The most probably thing is that I told you that a good number of “Hidalgos” served in the glorious “Tercios de España”.

Having served in the army in a time when it was not a bed of roses and a complete waste like it is today, and in a unit which was considered as elite and hard enough to provoke serious psychiatric problems and even suicides, I can assure you that the soldiers there would have eaten up the world if they had been ordered to do so.

Most of my comrades there did not come from accommodated social classes, but from the roughest neighbourhoods or from small villages. One would assume then that the pay was what made the unit and the longer term attractive to those men, as opposed to the symbolic pay that the men serving in conscripted units had. But again, it was only a little less miserable and it would only allow us to afford one or two days and nights out per month.. if we were lucky to be allowed out. And you can be sure that the background of the Spanish soldiers of the Tercios was at large similar to those, in a different time.

Well I do not doubt about the military qualities and value of your comrades but I have serious doubts that the background of the Spanish soldiers of the Tercios was similar at to those of the unit in that you served. I was serving in the "Military Police" in Valladolid and saw many Spanish soldiers from all over Spain even elite units.
It is true that in the "Tercios" served all type of men and every "Tercio" was a school of fame and a tribunal of merits. In the "Tercios" what worked was a meritocracy, where nobody is more than other, if he doesn't make more and knows more than another. But we have to keep in mind that in the "Tercios" served Grandes de España an great number of people from the noblest houses of Spain like Juan of Leyva, Antonio of Isunza, Juan of Gamboa, etc. and thousands of Castilian "hidalgos" and "infanzones" and "caballeros" from the Crown of Aragon also served. Let me say that it was plenty of men from small nobility (pequeña nobleza) that was especially abundant in Spain at that time not like nowadays (during the Austrias epoch about ten percent of the population was noble descent, see "La nobleza en la España moderna" by David García Hernán). One of the Spanish characteristics of those times is that for example people like Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón, Ercilla, Hugo of Montcada etc. were soldiers, not like in other countries were for example people like Shakespeare, Corneille or Goethe, never fight as soldiers. And for astonishment of the European nobility, the Spanish nobility didn't scorn to serve his king on foot in the infantry.

Undoubtedly not all the men of the "Tercios" had such "quality" and also had peasants, artisans or simple and humble villainous but with "clean lineage" after all. But frankly speaking I believe that nowadays neither in Spain neither in any other country the world one could find men of that class.

But never mind, let me ask you this. You say: "There was even a late ordinance that prohibited the soldiers expressly to marry (unfortunately probably we got lost good blood because descendant lack as losses during the wars)."

I have never heard of such an ordinance. Not that I say that it didn't exist, but I would like to see it. Are you sure that you are not referring to the ordinance that forbid the soldiers from carrying their families with the Tercios?


By the way, look what I found in this forum of Galician genealogy. Anything in squared brackets are my comments:Also interesting to a discussion about the Tercios, it would be to classify El Gran Capitán, don Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, the second son of the 5th Lord of Aguilar de la Frontera and of a noble lady who was the great-grandauther of the Infante don Fadrique Alfonso of Castille, and a Knight of the Order of Santiago.

Such ordinace exists and limited the limited the marriage to a sixth part of the men but as I say before was a late ordinance (See the work I have recommended) . In fact to not encouraging the marriage of the soldiers it was tolerated in the “Tercios” a contingent of prostitutes that some columnist estimates by ten percent. In all ways a thing is the law and other the life and the estimation is that more or less half of the men of the “Tercios” they were married. According to the mentioned book "the Spanish soldiers generally married women of the country where they resided and, they made good weddings." For that reason seems probably that not much women and children could go to Spain as most of them they went to the countries where they were from loosing Spain such a good lineages

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Visigodo

Please buy and read TERCIOS DE ESPAÑA by Fernando Martínez Laínez and José María Sánchez de Toca y Catalá. The last man is ...

yes, the latter is an army chief and the former is a writer of detective novels.

I am not sure or just can not remember that I have said that

Yes, we did talk about that.

but if I said such statement probably was because my Gothicism (that is not the same as Nordicism as you know )

Not quite the same. But it would be very sad if Gothicism turned into a construct to fill the meaningless lifes of a trash public.

The most probably thing is that I told you that a good number of “Hidalgos” served in the glorious “Tercios de España”.

Yes, from hidalgos to the pauper. Such was the nature of the Tercios.

Well I do not doubt about the military qualities and value of your comrades but I have serious doubts that the background of the Spanish soldiers of the Tercios was similar at to those of the unit in that you served. I was serving in the "Military Police"

Don't get offended but I sincerely doubt that you could get a slight idea of what I'm talking about from a post in the military police of the regular army. Because of my height and built I was appointed to the military police section of that unit after the instruction, and that was the only time that I used any contacts to be moved to a company of fusileers.

in Valladolid and saw many Spanish soldiers from all over Spain even elite units.

Elite? If you mean the COEs, those are not comparable units.

The spirit of the Tercios lived on in El Tercio (La Legión) and in Paratroopers Brigade of Infantry which was an offshot of the former.

It is true that in the "Tercios" served all type of men and every "Tercio" was a school of fame and a tribunal of merits. In the "Tercios" what worked was a meritocracy, where nobody is more than other, if he doesn't make more and knows more than another.

That was implemented in El Tercio through the system by which rising through the ranks is possible without passing through the military academies: la escala legionaria.

But we have to keep in mind that in the "Tercios" served Grandes de España an great number of people from the noblest houses of Spain like Juan of Leyva, Antonio of Isunza, Juan of Gamboa, etc. and thousands of Castilian "hidalgos" and "infanzones" and "caballeros" from the Crown of Aragon also served. Let me say that it was plenty of men from small nobility (pequeña nobleza) that was especially abundant in Spain at that time not like nowadays (during the Austrias epoch about ten percent of the population was noble descent, see "La nobleza en la España moderna" by David García Hernán).

Instead of speculating on preconceived archetypes, you should read the descriptions of the soldiers of the Spanish Tercios that were made throughout Europe. They don't fit in what you have in mind. Nothing far from the archetype of Spanish today. A coincidence? I don't think so.

Undoubtedly not all the men of the "Tercios" had such "quality" and also had peasants, artisans or simple and humble villainous but with "clean lineage" after all. But frankly speaking I believe that nowadays neither in Spain neither in any other country the world one could find men of that class.

There you are pointing to a very different problem, which is that of social decadence.

You like to quote Ortega y Gasset about the character of the Spanish people and how this is enhanced during the times of hardship to make them give the best of them.

That is what characterized the men of the Tercios. And this what characterizes the Spanish people today. It is neither positive nor negative per se.

Much as I hate to do this, I must debunk this pseudo-gothicism which is largely unrelated to what Gothicism is about because it is tainted with Nordo-Germanicism.

Gothicism as polluted by Nordicism points to a decadence of Spain as the Gothic element assumedly decreases. It also presumes a gratuitous supremacy of character in the Gothic element as well as adscribing a social superior status.

The causes of the decline of the Spanish Empire are clear to history researchers (maybe not to novelists), both Spanish and not, and these do not point to any change in the racial composition nor in its percetages. And so is the lost of fuel of the Tercios.

For one thing, the Tercios always had a problem with the finances. Not from any particular point in their history but from their very start. Serve as an example the chapter of las cuentas del Gran Capitán, which in French translates as comptes d'apothicaire, and which makes reference to the answer that the Gran Capitán gave to King Ferdinand when the king demanded that don Gonzalo presented the detailed list of expenses in the campaigns of Italy. The Gran Capitán, who had conquered a kingdom for the Crown, furious at this demand instigated by the complaints of certain officers of the exchequer, gave the king a list which started with items such as:

"Two hundred thousand seven hundred and thirty-six ducats, given in alms to the monasteries and the poor, to secure their prayers for the success of the king's enterprise. Seven hundred thousand four hundred and ninety-four ducats to the spies employed in his service."

... and other preposterous as well as ironic items.

If there is a part of legend in this or not, what is important to notice is that this marks the start of a "tradition" in the Tercios, in spite of which the Tercios were the more powerful army that the Europe had seen since the Roman Legions.

The key for the power of this army was in the sacrificed existance of the men of the Spanish companies, a race of men accustomed to the harshness of the lands to which they belonged. No wonder the other men prefered to the Spanish soldiers were not the big German Lanskenets or similars, but the Irish. No other nation gained the honour of fighting in the vanguard mixed with the Spanish companies but Ireland. Which tells that the glorious history of the Tercios is not a story of Northern men but the epic of Western men.

If you need to find the blood of such a race in modern times, you only have to look at the men fighting in Cuba or in The Philippines, or more recently in Spain itself or in Russia.

It is also not a coincidence that those Tercios which some would like to see as a "gothic reemergence" or "gothic remains", had in their two most glorious chiefs men who are clearly not much gothic: don Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, El Gran Capitán, and don Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Gran Duque de Alba.



Both of them from the highest nobility of Spain. Grandes de España. It is not that without them Los Tercios would have been different. It is that without them Los Tercios would not have existed.

Now, if I were to follow the patterns in the construction of Nordicism, I would start here to wonder about the role of the Goths in Spain. Or maybe I would start hundreds of years earlier, when the army of the "Visigoths" obtained its most glorious victory against an army much superior in numbers of Franks. This "army of the Goths" was commanded by the Dux Claudio, a non Goth who was both Dux Provinciae and Dux Militaris (the two highest grades of the nobility and the military, which rarely coincided in one man).

And from there on it wouldn't be difficult to build up history where the role of the Goths is relegated and diminished, and even pointed as problematic. If I had to do this, be certain that I would do it with a background of solid historical evidence which Nordicism never had.

But then I would be sinking to their low levels and further I would be creating an unnecesary artificial debate where there should be none.

Likely, this would have never been a problem if some foreigners had been deported from Spain when the seeked refuge here. I hope that I'm making myself clear here.

In all ways a thing is the law and other the life and the estimation is that more or less half of the men of the “Tercios” they were married.

That looks like an estimate based on the status declared by the men at the time of being recruited. So the other half were not married at the moment of being recruited but that doesn't mean that they never married.. or never had children. Let us not forget that in Spain in those times "las inclusas" picked up large numbers of children abandoned to them. Many of these children were of the men serving in Los Tercios and it was a known problem in Spain.

According to the mentioned book "the Spanish soldiers generally married women of the country where they resided and, they made good weddings." For that reason seems probably that not much women and children could go to Spain as most of them they went to the countries where they were from loosing Spain such a good lineages

Yet the testimony of the Parish of Pontedeume points into the opposite direction. That is, children not only from the Spanish soldiers, but from the soldiers of other nations being born in Spain. And let us not forget that this is nothing of a speculative nature, but based on hard facts.

Just to mention a couple of fine lineages, the O'Neills and the O'Donnells.

Do you really believe that many Spanish soldiers of the Tercios would stay in The Lowlands? Seriously..

[Breogan]

Without wanting to minimize Gothics' virtues (that as Germanic men they were, they had many ones ), we must remember here Classic descriptions of Iberian's belicosity, far before Gothics came to Peninsule.
Let's add to this ancient characteristic, no nordid impplications here, Roman military tactics (Polibius explained them well) and the long experience of Reconquista. Then you have a great Army like Tercios.

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Breogan

Without wanting to minimize Gothics' virtues (that as Germanic men they were, they had many ones )

Germanicness here is a relative concept. I'm not sure of the relation of Eastern Germanic in general with Western Germanics. It was forcibly nill with Northern Germanics. But the Goths apparently were not very fond of W. Germanics and they had a dislike for being confused with them.

we must remember here Classic descriptions of Iberian's belicosity, far before Gothics came to Peninsule.
Let's add to this ancient characteristic, no nordid impplications here, Roman military tactics (Polibius explained them well) and the long experience of Reconquista. Then you have a great Army like Tercios.

In actual fact, one characteristic central to the Tercios was sufferance, which was --not coincidentially-- characteristical of the ancient peoples of the Peninsula and which has endured since.

This was also another reason why the Irish (especially those from the Northern Ireland province of Ulster) were so highly appreciated as soldiers in the Tercios.

By the way, did you know that the motto of the Spanish Tercios was Semper Fidelis? The Americans are nothing but a gang of rogue swindlers without a gram of imagination in their brains.

[Breogan]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

By the way, did you know that the motto of the Spanish Tercios was Semper Fidelis? The Americans are nothing but a gang of rogue swindlers without