Why are the Sword & Bucklermen down as having no Impact weapon?
Even though they were usually cut down by Knights(which was why why they were dropped from later Spanish armies), they were famous for shredding Pikeblocks, which implies some sort of Impact Weapon & not just Melee Specialists
IMHO, makes them valid for considering them as Impact Foot, but I'm open to explanation why they might not be.....
We are talking about the early times of this kind of infantry, Bluckermen were not the same troops in th XV century that the later ones in the XVI or XVII.
Your are right, these guys could break enemy pikes, but they fought mixed with the Spanish pikes in the XVI century.
In Granada and Italian wars, they fought as independent units, ther were armed with a small round shield (Rodela), and sword. In this period, they were deployed near the pikes units, and no were trained to do strong frontal charges, ussualy they joined the combats after the impact.
I have an ancient text of a battle in 1477, this battle was near Murcia against Castilians and Granadines, here we can read that the Bluckermen were deployed in small units, and it says: "Nude swords were protected of the enemy heavy cavalry by the pikes" (Nude swords means drawn swords).
We don´t have any evidence of Bucklermen charging strongly to enemy formations (In XV century at least), I think they were good quality auxliary troops.
