2 - Recruiting and Levies for the Irish Tercios in Flanders

Summary

Recruitment at the expense of the captains

The levy of soldiers into the army was one of the major problems facing the Spanish high command in Flanders. Every year the recruitment mechanism went into operation to replace the wastage of manpower from the previous campaigning season. Each ‘nation’ put into practice its own ways of recruitment in its home territory to fulfil the task. Spanish soldiers were recruited in different ways, although voluntary recruitment was still the main method for obtaining men from 1621 to 1644, while the Germans were always recruited by military entrepreneurs.

The results of the levies of men for the Irish companies varied greatly for most of the period studied, depending on the moment when the levy was carried out. The usual way to obtain recruits was at the captains’ own expense. The system was straightforward: a reformed captain, an alférez or a sergeant (although men without military experience could also do it), after having requested a patent of a captaincy, received this from the governor-general of Flanders with the condition that he recruit men for his company. In theory, this corps consisted of two hundred men raised at his personal expense, although he could choose his subordinate officers. After the arrival of the recruits in Flanders, the captain would usually be paid 10 escudos for each soldier levied. The system had both positive and negative aspects.

The positive aspects of the system were that, despite the fact that the alférez and the sergeant in the Irish companies should have changed after three years of service (as decreed in the Ordinances), in practice they were never changed, so with this type of levy these officers were able to obtain promotion. The new captains received ayudas de costa to cover part of their expenses. They were responsible for the costs of the shipping and sustenance of the recruits going to Flanders. What is clear from the surviving archival sources is that the obligation of the recruiting captain to present two hundred men per company to be registered in the books of the army was never fulfilled. Nevertheless, this type of levy allowed for the maintenance of a satisfactory number of Irish soldiers. It also allowed them to sail to Flanders in small groups, which made it more difficult for the English government to stop them, and also helped them evade capture by the Dutch navy.