A bit more about the Spanish Army

 While reading about the Dutch Army of the 17th Century I stumbled across the following image showing two stages of the Battle of Nieuwpoort in 1600.  What is interesting is that in the lower half of the image the Spanish infantry squadrons are advancing with their corner Mangas of shot ahead of the pike blocks. Notice how they are still in the same relative positions to each other though so that the pike only needs to keep advancing into the centre of their formation to create a traditional 'tercio' formation.

In the upper image the pike blocks have closed up on their Mangas and the shot have taken post to either side of the pike blocks.  in the very top right of the upper image there appear to be two mangas on each flank of the pike forming wings, while in front of them the shot are in columns on either side of the pike.

How accurate this image is is open to doubt as it was published in 1649 in the Atlas van Loon. So was created almost half a century after the event.  However Henry Hexham shows the Spanish Infantry exactly as depicted above in the lower image (probably in) in his "A trve and briefe relation of the bloody battel of Nievport in Flanders found betwixt Prince Mavrice of happy memory and Albert arch-duke of Avstria vpon the second of Iuly 1600" Published in 1641.  I'm saying probably as the images come from "Steve's Balagan" blog which you can find here Battle of Nieuport 2 July 1600 - Steven's Balagan.

I'm going to make an assumption here, Hexham served with the English Regiment of Sir Francis Vere in the service of the Dutch Republic.  He was certainly with him at the Seige of Ostend in 1601 (aged 16 or 17) so had first hand knowledge of events. In fact he lived most of his life in Holland serving in the regiments of Sir Horace Vere and then Sir George Goring after Francis Vere returned to England.  I'd tend to think that any sketch of field deployments would have some basis in truth.

So what this seems to be showing us is that the corner Mangas did operate semi-independantly.