TercioA Tercio (ˈteɾθjo), Spanish for "[a] third") was a military unit of the Spanish Army during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs and the Spanish Habsburgs in the early modern period. The Tercios were renowned as the finest professional infantry in Europe for over a century and a half due to their effectiveness of their battlefield formations. They were the elite military units of the Spanish Monarchy and the essential pieces of the powerful land forces of the Spanish Empire, sometimes also fighting with the navy.
Portuguese NavyThe Portuguese Navy (Marinha Portuguesa, also known as Marinha de Guerra Portuguesa or as Armada Portuguesa) is the naval branch of the Portuguese Armed Forces which, in cooperation and integrated with the other branches of the Portuguese military, is charged with the military defense of Portugal. On 12 December 2017, the Portuguese Navy commemorated the 700th anniversary of its official creation by King Denis of Portugal. Tracing its origins back to the 12th century, it is the oldest continuously serving navy in the world.
BrigadierBrigadier brɪɡəˈdɪər is a military rank, the seniority of which depends on the country. In some countries, it is a senior rank above colonel, equivalent to a brigadier general or commodore, typically commanding a brigade of several thousand soldiers. In other countries, it is a non-commissioned rank. The word and rank of "Brigadier" originates from France. In the French Army, the Brigadier des Armées du Roi (Brigadier of the King's Armies) was a general officer rank, created in 1657.
CorporalCorporal is a military rank in use by the armed forces of many countries. It is also a police rank in some police services. The rank is usually the lowest ranking non-commissioned officer. In some militaries, the rank of corporal nominally corresponds to commanding a section or squad of soldiers. The word is a contraction from the medieval Italian phrase capo corporale ( [of soldiers]). While most Indo-European languages use the contraction, West Iberian languages use cabo.
Aide-de-campAn aide-de-camp (UKˌeɪddəˈkɒ̃, -ˈkaemp; French expression meaning literally "helper in the [military] camp") is a personal assistant or secretary to a person of high rank, usually a senior military, police or government officer, or to a member of a royal family or a head of state. An aide-de-camp may participate at ceremonial functions, and the first aide-de-camp is typically the foremost personal aide. This is not to be confused with an adjutant, who is the senior administrator of a military unit.
MusketeerA musketeer (mousquetaire) was a type of soldier equipped with a musket. Musketeers were an important part of early modern warfare, particularly in Europe, as they normally comprised the majority of their infantry. The musketeer was a precursor to the rifleman. Muskets were replaced by rifles as the almost universal firearm for modern armies during the period 1850 to 1860. The traditional designation of "musketeer" for an infantry private survived in the Imperial German Army until World War I.
LancerA lancer was a type of cavalryman who fought with a lance. Lances were used for mounted warfare in Assyria as early as 700 BC and subsequently by Persia, India, Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome. The weapon was widely used throughout Eurasia during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by heavy cavalry, but fell out of general use by the late 16th century, before its revival by light cavalry in the early 19th century.
DragoonDragoons were originally a class of mounted infantry, who used horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight on foot. From the early 17th century onward, dragoons were increasingly also employed as conventional cavalry and trained for combat with swords and firearms from horseback. While their use goes back to the late 16th century, dragoon regiments were established in most European armies during the 17th and early 18th centuries; they provided greater mobility than regular infantry but were far less expensive than cavalry.
Angolan War of IndependenceThe Angolan War of Independence (Guerra de Independência de Angola; 1961–1974), in Angola called the Luta Armada de Libertação Nacional ("Armed Struggle of National Liberation"), began as an uprising against forced cultivation of cotton, and became a multi-faction struggle for control of Portugal's overseas province of Angola among three nationalist movements and a separatist movement.
County of PortugalThe County of Portugal (Condado de Portugal, Condado Portucalense, Condado de Portucale; in documents of the period the name used was Portugalia) refers to two successive medieval counties in the region around Braga and Porto, today corresponding to littoral northern Portugal, within which the identity of the Portuguese people formed. The first county existed from the mid-ninth to the mid-eleventh centuries as a vassalage of the Kingdom of Asturias and the Kingdom of Galicia and also part of the Kingdom of León, before being abolished as a result of rebellion.
