View Single Post
Old 21st October 2019, 11:33 AM   #7
fernando
Lead Moderator European Armoury
 
fernando's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Portugal
Posts: 9,641
Default

Precisely as i approached in my previous post. Translating gastador in a machine will give you (money) spender, thus showing us a funny result.
We should consider the other acceptation of the term and follow that path. Gastador = Latin vastator, from the verb vastare, devastare, and in this archaic form it indicated the one that would hack, ravage, destroy or devastate a region. In the seventeenth century it meant men who had the task of clearing paths, building and repairing bridges, digging ditches, digging trenches, and generally doing all the manual work of preparing the ground for progression, defense, or development. Army assault on an enemy fortified position. They were the predecessors of the sappers.

Or, if you prefer ...
The Gatadores are defined in the "Military Dictionary" by Jorge de Wartelet (1863) as those soldiers chosen in the Grenadier companies of the Infantry regiments, who marched "at the head of them armed with rifle with bayonet, once they wore in addition useful of sappers, of which they used in campaign to cross the difficult steps ”. It is not possible to contemplate as weapons the tools that equipped the Gastadores, but it is no less certain that such tools exist constituting “distinctive” of this “class” of troops, just as they did in certain “classes” weapons devoid of other utility practice. The "distinctive tools" of Gastador do not know models, exaggerate their dimensions and usually include references to their service in a certain regiment. In the middle of the 19th century, the formation of such tools ceased. The Uniformity Regulations for Infantry of August 18, 1886, established thirteen Gastadores per battalion, equipped with five axes, five with picks, two with shovels and one with saw, specifying: “They will not be used in any formation, subtracting deposited in warehouse, to be able to use them in cases of fires or works in which they are to be used ”.
(Juan L. Calvado December 2005)
fernando is online now   Reply With Quote