Almost 10 years on all social networks of the Internet, severe men with decent regularity post the same short video: surrounded by comrades, Viggo «Aragorn» Mortensen, who proudly refused to surrender to the despicable French, dies at Rocroi. All this spectacle against the background of the forest of peaks is accompanied by a sad guttural song with pretentious words. «What a death! What a song! This is the Spanish infantry!» — admire stern men the old Spanish song. Well, let's try to figure out where and when the song was born, which is most often called the «Anthem of the tercios» (Himno de los Tercios), sometimes the «Anthem of the Spanish tercios» and even the «Anthem of the Spanish tercios in Flanders».
Alas, the first attempts to find any traces of an unquestionably successful song in the depth of centuries fail. It turns out that the Spanish tercios, terrifying the enemy, went into battle to the rhythm of the sounds of drums and flutes, but… having shouted the traditional «Santiago and Spain!», Then they kept quiet, preferring to listen to the commands of the officers. Certainly, like any soldiers, the Spaniards during the Thirty Years' War sang on a march or a halt, but these were ordinary soldiers' songs, down to earth and vulgar, in which there was no place for pretentious words about the holy bonds of comradeship, blood, king, flag, great Spanish empire — and oaths to surrender only after death.
A closer look at the question reveals that no Spanish marches and hymns of the seventeenth century have survived at all, much less those common to the entire army — the earliest known of this kind are from the end of the eighteenth century, when there were no longer any tertials. So, where was the «Anthem of the Spanish tercios» sounded for the first time, which cannot even be called an antique stylization? On February 19, 2009, «Guila Roja», an adventure series for teenagers, was launched on Spanish television, with the soundtrack written by the talented and prolific composer Daniel Sánchez de la Hera. Именно в 31-й серии «Красного орла», вышедшей на экраны 20 октября 2010 года, в сцене казни португальцами пленных испанских солдат и прозвучала песня, которую иногда называют «Песней барабанщика» (Canción del Tamborilero). It was in the 31st episode of «Guila Roja», released on October 20, 2010, in the scene of the execution of captured Spanish soldiers by the Portuguese, that the song was sounded, sometimes called «the Drummer's Song» (Canción del Tamborilero).
The series itself clearly does not claim to be a masterpiece, but the memorable song perfectly formed the frames of the final scene of the 2006 Spanish feature film «Alatriste» (Alatriste), shot according to the cycle of novels by the iconic writer Arturo Perez-Reverte. It was done! Now the majority of young and gray-haired romantics are convinced that the «Anthem of the Spanish tercios» is an old song that sounded in the film about the brave mercenary Alatriste.
Let’s not be too hard on the Internet legends.
