Grouping men in this way, as well as the use of the pike returned at the Renaissance (Flanders and Swiss mercenaries) to face royal armies with a strong tradition of heavy cavalry (France at the battles of Courtrai and Burgundy at Grandson then Morat). Also, Machiavelli (Discourses on Livy) theorised on the use of long pikes to arm the city militias of the small merchant states of Northern Italy (in some of which the beginnings of a citizen-body were apparent). The ordre serré was also used by all the armies of the Thirty Years' War (notably the German mercenaries) even when they were transformed into composite formations with arquebusiers, such as the Spanish Tercio.