Tercios Especiales (The Legacy of the Glorious)

The Tercios Especiales, or Special Tercios, are an infantry elite corps of the Spanish Royal Army, whose task is to use guerrilla warfare to confront the enemies of the Kingdom of Spain when necessary. They are trained in such arts, as well as survival in many different climates and use of many kinds of weaponry.

Origins
The origins of the Tercios Especiales draw from the times of the Romans, when Viriathus, one of the leaders of the native tribes of Lusitania, used this kind of warfare and his military and political genius with great success, with betrayal being the only thing that stopped him. Also, during the Spanish Independence War, the invasion of Spain by Napoleon, the guerrilleros were the most successful defense Spain had, preventing total French control over the nation as they made it less than impossible for French soldiers to come out of a city without being attacked.

However, the spark for the creation of the Tercios was the Hohenzollerns' War, where Carlist requetés (militias) assisted Francisco Serrano's army in stopping the French invasion. Former Carlist general Ramón Cabrera, who had broken with Carlism several years before the war, used this and knowledge about Bushido provided by Gregorio López Jiménez, the military attaché to the Spanish Embassy in Japan, to develop the idea of a guerrilla group that would be a formal part of the Army and would use their training to wreck the enemy's supply lines. The Tercios Especiales consider September 29th 1871 (the day when Cabrera met with King Leopoldo I, President Francisco Serrano and Minister of War Juan Prim to present his idea to them) their birth date.

History
After being formally created on October 1871, several soldiers that had demonstrated great ability and use of weapons were invited to join the elite corps. Their next two years were full of hard training in as many possible environments as possible, as well as in the use of many kinds of weaponry, so that they could always be armed against an enemy, even if it came down to the use of primitive weapons.

Their fire test was on early 1874. The Carlist Rebellion had started on March 1874, and the regular army had been unable to catch them, due to their great knowledge of the territories where they acted. Wishing for a rapid elimination of such a problem so that Spain could concentrate on the Cuban Revolution, President Prim sent the Tercios to Navarra and the Maestrazgo, where the Irredent Carlists were concentrated, and they were given orders to locate the Carlists so that the Army could finally attack them.

However, no one knew about the Tercios for three weeks. It was then that the Tercios that had been sent to Navarra presented themselves in Pamplona, stating that they had captured and killed most Carlists in the region without suffering a casualty, and had brought them all to the city, A few days later, the city of Teruel received a similar visit. The Tercios' actions ended all support for militant Carlism in a stroke.

After a few days of rest and being decorated by the government, the Tercios were sent to deal with the Cuban Revolution. Just a few days after arriving, they managed to arrest former Revolutionary Cuba President Carlos Manuel de Céspedes. Máximo Gómez, the main General of the Cuban Revolutionary Army, fell to a Tercio sharpshooter two weeks after Céspedes' arrest. The Tercios would collaborate with the army in mining the rebels' confidence, until, on June 15th, they asked for an armistice, which eventually gave way to the Compromise of Baraguá.