German Catholic army- Tartshiers?

I have a German Catholic army which I used for FOGR - but having played a couple of games now I am definitely going to be using Baroque. In the FOGR army lists they had a troop type called Tartshiers - which seemed to be close combat sword & buckler armed troops.

Does anyone know what these actually were, as I can't find any reference to them on the internet?

And if they are an actual troop type how would they be classified in Baroque?

Dik.

I think they could be troops integrated in the tercios, more typical for the earlier period. But I will do a research.

Images of Dutch revolt battles and sieges often feature sword and shield armed figures--whether they are officers or picked men or what is usually not clear, although I think they tend to be Spanish, and they tend to be mixed in with firearm carrying infantry in illustrations of storming actions.
They usually look like this guy, from the 1580's:



I have seen the FoGR list and I can't for the life of me figure out where the list writer was getting the idea that there were entire units of those guys, because I only ever see them in pictures as individuals, probably officers. If you google image search on "Pieter Snayers" You can find a bunch of his battle paintings, and occasionally people show close ups like this one:



You can see two figures in front of the infantry unit with swords and round shields. I think they're officers.

The Imperial Field Marshal Mountecuccoli was advocating the use of bullet-proof shield carrying guys as the front rank of pikes in his treatise "Sulle Battaglie". But they're part of the unit, not by themselves. That dates somewhere from the late 1630's through the 1660's (Montecuccoli apparently revised it).

Henry Hexham in his "Principles of the Art Militarie" doesn't mention any sort of shield carrying troop at all. That's dated between 1636 and 1640.

Another treatise I have "The Military Garden" likewise only concerns itself with muskets and pikes. That's from 1629.

I'm sure there is lots of stuff in German I've never seen, but I've never seen such a formation depicted in paintings, and nothing I've seen in English mentions them.

I read that the Prince of Orange proposed arming his (pikemen?) with sword and shield "like ancient Romans" in the late 16th century, but the state-general said NO.

OK, that's brilliant. Thanks for the detailed response very informative.

Enjoy!

I think he is referring to the Doppelsöldner which had the role of attacking enemy pikemen like the spanish Rodoleros and other sword and Bucklermen.
Doppelsöldner were usually equipped with twohanded swords but some of them carrried onehanded swords and a shield.
If you translate Buckler with the help of Googletranslate the German result is Tartsche which was not a buckler but a bigger shield but beside this the Doppelsöldner who used a shield often hat a bigger shield like the Tartsche rather than a Buckler.

Tartschier seems to be the Author's idea of German for "Tartschen bearer" which is theoretically a correct grammatical construction but unfortunately not an existing word in German.
Like Musketier is someone who bears a musket or Arkebusier is someone carrying an arquebus...