Dorude
Recruit
The Swiss Royal Guards
The Swiss Royal Guards is a Elite yet equal mercenary regiment. Looking for members that are professional and diverse in all activities. Our regiment is more personal based, to which all ideas are welcome.
Ranking System
Oberst (Colonel – the commandant of the Guard)
Oberstleutnant (Lieutenant Colonel – the vice-commandant)
Kaplan (Chaplain – considered the same rank as a lieutenant colonel)
Major
Hauptmann (Captain)
Non-commissioned officers:
Feldwebel (Sergeant-major)
Wachtmeister (Sergeant)
Korporal (Corporal)
Vizekorporal (Vice-corporal; closest British equivalent would be lance corporal)
Enlisted:
Gardist (Guardsman)
Recruit (Recruits)
Oberstleutnant (Lieutenant Colonel – the vice-commandant)
Kaplan (Chaplain – considered the same rank as a lieutenant colonel)
Major
Hauptmann (Captain)
Non-commissioned officers:
Feldwebel (Sergeant-major)
Wachtmeister (Sergeant)
Korporal (Corporal)
Vizekorporal (Vice-corporal; closest British equivalent would be lance corporal)
Enlisted:
Gardist (Guardsman)
Recruit (Recruits)
Unit GroupingRegiment = 2 Company's
Company = 2 Platoon's
1 Platoon
1 Major
1 Hauptman
1 Sgt.Maj 1 Sgt.Maj
2 Sgt 2 Sgt
3 Kpl's 3 Kpl's
6 Vk 6 Vk
18 Grd 18 Grd
6 Vk 6 Vk
18 Grd 18 Grd
History
There were two different corps of Swiss mercenaries performing guard duties for the Kings of France: the Hundred Swiss (Cent Suisses), serving within the Palace as essentially bodyguards and ceremonial troops, and the Swiss Guards (Gardes Suisses), guarding the entrances and outer perimeter. In addition the Gardes suisses served in the field as a fighting regiment in times of war.
Hundred Swiss (Cent Suisses)
The Hundred Swiss were created in 1480 when Louis XI retained a Swiss company for his personal guard. By 1496 they comprised one hundred guardsmen plus about twenty-seven officers and sergeants. Their main role was the protection of the King within the palace as the garde du dedans du Louvre (the Louvre indoor guard), but in the earlier part of their history they accompanied the King to war. In the Battle of Pavia (1525) the Hundred Swiss of King Francis I were slain before Francis was captured by the Spanish. The Hundred Swiss shared the indoor guard with the King's Bodyguards (Garde du Corps), who were Frenchmen.
The Hundred Swiss were armed with halberds, the blade of which carried the Royal arms in gold, as well as gold-hilted swords. Their ceremonial dress as worn until 1789 comprised an elaborate 16th century Swiss costume covered with braiding and livery lace. A plainer dark blue and red uniform with bearskin headdress was worn for ordinary duties.
The Cent Suisses company was disbanded after Louis XVI left Versailles in October 1789. It was however refounded on 15 July 1814 with an establishment of 136 guardsmen and eight officers. The Hundred Swiss accompanied Louis XVIII into exile in Belgium the following year and returned with him to Paris following Waterloo. The unit then resumed its traditional role of palace guards at the Tuileries but in 1817 it was replaced by a new guard company drawn from the French regiments of the Royal Guard. Swiss Guards (Gardes Suisses)
King Francis I of France used some 120,000 Swiss mercenaries in his wars. In 1616, King Louis XIII gave a regiment of Swiss infantry the name of Gardes suisses (Swiss Guards). The new regiment had the primary role of protecting the doors, gates and outer perimeters of the various royal palaces. This unit was officially a regiment of the line, but it was generally regarded as part of the King's Military Household.
During the 17th and 18th centuries the Swiss Guards maintained a reputation for discipline and steadiness in both peacetime service and foreign campaigning. Their officers were all Swiss and their rate of pay substantially higher than that of the regular French soldiers. Internal discipline was maintained according to Swiss codes which were significantly harsher than those of the regular French Army.
By the 16th century the Swiss Guards were brigaded with the Regiment of French Guards (Gardes Françaises), with whom they shared the outer guard, and were in peace-time stationed in barracks on the outskirts of Paris. Like the eleven Swiss regiments of line infantry in French service, the Gardes suisses wore red coats. The line regiments had black, yellow or light blue facings but the Swiss Guards were distinguished by dark blue lapels and cuffs edged in white embroidery. Only the grenadier company wore bearskins while the other companies wore the standard tricorn headdress of the French infantry. The Guards were recruited from all the Swiss cantons. The nominal establishment was 1,600 men though actual numbers normally seem to have been below this.Swiss Guards during the Revolution
The most famous episode in the history of the Swiss Guards was their defence of the Tuileries Palace in central Paris during the French Revolution. Of the nine hundred Swiss Guards defending the Palace on August 10, 1792, about six hundred were killed during the fighting or massacred after surrender. One group of sixty Swiss were taken as prisoners to the Paris City Hall before being killed by the crowd there. An estimated hundred and sixty more died in prison of their wounds, or were killed during the September Massacres that followed. Apart from fewer than a hundred Swiss who escaped from the Tuileries, some hidden by sympathetic Parisians, the only survivors of the regiment were a three-hundred-strong detachment which had been sent to Normandy to escort grain convoys a few days before August 10th. The Swiss officers were mostly amongst those massacred, although Major Karl Josef von Bachmann in command at the Tuileries was formally tried and guillotined in September, still wearing his red uniform coat. Two Swiss officers, the captains Henri de Salis and Joseph Zimmermann, did however survive and went on to reach senior rank under Napoleon and the Restoration.
There appears to be no truth in the charge that Louis XVI caused the defeat and destruction of the Guards by ordering them to lay down their arms when they could still have held the Tuileries. Rather, the Swiss ran low on ammunition and were overwhelmed by superior numbers when fighting broke out spontaneously after the Royal Family had been escorted from the Palace to take refuge with the National Assembly of France. A note has survived written by the King ordering the Swiss to retire from the Palace and return to their barracks but this was only acted on after their position had become untenable. The regimental standards had been secretly buried by the adjutant shortly before the regiment was summoned to the Tuileries on the night of 8/9 August, indicating that the likely end was foreseen. They were discovered by a gardener and ceremoniously burned by the new Republican authorities. The barracks of the Guard at Courbevoie were stormed by the local National Guard and the few Swiss still on duty there also killed.
The Lion Monument in Lucerne. The incised Latin may be translated, To the loyalty and courage of the Swiss.
The heroic but futile stand of the Swiss is commemorated by Bertel Thorvaldsen's Lion Monument in Lucerne, dedicated in 1821, which shows a dying lion collapsed upon broken symbols of the French monarchy. An inscription on the monument lists the twenty-six Swiss officers who died on 10 August and 2–3 September 1792, and records that approximately 760 Swiss Guardsmen were killed on those days.Swiss Guards following the Restoration
The French Revolution abolished mercenary troops in its citizen army, but Napoleon I and the Restoration Monarchy both made use of Swiss troops. Four Swiss infantry regiments were employed by Napoleon, serving in both Spain and Russia. Two of the eight infantry regiments included in the Garde Royale from 1815 to 1830 were Swiss and can be regarded as successors of the old Gardes suisses. When the Tuileries was stormed again, in the July Revolution (July 29, 1830), the Swiss regiments, fearful of another massacre, were withdrawn or melted into the crowd. They were not used again. In 1831 disbanded veterans of the Swiss regiments and another foreign unit, the Hohenlohe Regiment, were recruited into the newly raised French Foreign Legion for service in Algeria.Historical Origins
The history of the Swiss Guards has its origins in the 15th century. Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484) already made a previous alliance with the Swiss Confederation and built barracks in Via Pellegrino after foreseeing the possibility of recruiting Swiss mercenaries. The pact was renewed by Innocent VIII (1484–1492) in order to use them against the Duke of Milan. Alexander VI (1492–1503) later actually used the Swiss mercenaries during their alliance with the King of France. During the time of the Borgias, however, the Italian Wars began in which the Swiss mercenaries were a fixture in the front lines among the warring factions, sometimes for France and sometimes for the Holy See or the Holy Roman Empire. The mercenaries enlisted when they heard King Charles VIII of France was going to raise a war against Naples. Among the participants in the war against Naples was Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, the future Pope Julius II (1503–1513), who was well acquainted with the Swiss having been Bishop of Lausanne years earlier. The expedition failed in part thanks to new alliances made by Alexander VI against the French. When Cardinal della Rovere became Pope Julius II in 1503, he asked the Swiss Diet to provide him with a constant corps of 200 Swiss mercenaries. In September 1505, the first contingent of 150 soldiers started their march towards Rome, under the command of Kaspar von Silenen, and entered the city on January 22, 1506, today given as the official date of the Guard's foundation. "The Swiss see the sad situation of the Church of God, Mother of Christianity, and realize how grave and dangerous it is that any tyrant, avid for wealth, can assault with impunity, the common Mother of Christianity," declared Huldrych Zwingli, a Swiss Catholic who later became a Protestant reformer. Pope Julius II later granted them the title "Defenders of the Church's freedom".
The force has varied greatly in size over the years and has even been disbanded. Its first, and most significant, hostile engagement was on May 6, 1527 when 147 of the 189 Guards, including their commander, died fighting the troops of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in the stand of the Swiss Guard during the Sack of Rome in order to allow Clement VII to escape through the Passetto di Borgo, escorted by the other 40 guards. The last stand battlefield is located on the left side of St Peter's Basilica, close to the Campo Santo Teutonico (German Graveyard).
The Swiss Guard has served the popes since the 16th century. Ceremonially, they shared duties in the Papal household with the Palatine Guard and Noble Guard, both of which were disbanded in 1970 under Paul VI. Today the Papal Swiss Guard have taken over the ceremonial roles of the former units. At the end of 2005, there were 135 members of the Swiss Guard. This number consisted of a Commandant (bearing the rank of Oberst or Colonel), a chaplain, three officers, one sergeant major (feldwebel), 30 NCOs, and 99 halberdiers, the rank equivalent to private (so called because of their traditional Halberd).
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