28 Facts About Swiss mercenaries

Swiss mercenaries were a powerful infantry force constituted by professional soldiers originary from the cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy.

Swiss mercenaries were valued throughout the kingdoms and states of Medieval Europe for the power of their determined mass attack in deep columns with the spear, the pike, and halberd.

Warriors of the Swiss mercenaries cantons had gradually developed a reputation throughout Europe as skilled soldiers, due to their successful defense of their liberties against their Austrian Habsburg overlords, starting as early as the late 13th century, including remarkable upset victories over heavily armoured knights at Morgarten and Laupen.

Until roughly 1490, the Swiss mercenaries had a virtual monopoly on pike-armed mercenary service.

However, after that date, the Swiss mercenaries were increasingly supplanted by imitators, chiefly the Landsknechts.

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Swiss were not flattered by the imitation, and the two bodies of mercenaries immediately became bitter rivals over employment and on the battlefield, where they were often opposed during the major European conflict of the early sixteenth century, the Great Italian Wars.

At Bicocca, the Swiss mercenaries, serving the French king, attempted repeatedly to storm an impregnable defensive position without artillery or missile support, only to be mown down by small-arms and artillery fire.

The Swiss mercenaries did deploy bows, crossbows, handguns and artillery of their own, however these always remained very subsidiary to the pike and halberd square.

Swiss mercenaries remained primarily pikemen throughout the sixteenth century, but after that period they adopted similar infantry formations and tactics to other units in the armies in which they served.

The Swiss mercenaries adopted the musket in increasingly large numbers as the seventeenth century wore on, and abandoned the pike, their ancient trademark, altogether at around the same time as other troops in the French army, circa 1700.

Swiss mercenaries were recruited according to contracts between the French Monarchy and Swiss cantons or individual noble families.

Swiss mercenaries soldier was paid at a higher level than his French counterpart but was subject to a harsher disciplinary code, administered by his own officers.

French-speaking Swiss mercenaries soldiers were generally to prove more susceptible to revolutionary propaganda than their German-speaking colleagues.

At the outbreak of the French Revolution the Swiss mercenaries troops were, as at least nominal foreigners, still considered more reliable than their French counterparts in a time of civil unrest.

Over three thousand Swiss mercenaries soldiers transferred individually to French units and continued in service.

Swiss mercenaries specified that this newly raised Swiss Corps should comprise only citizens of Switzerland without "mingling in deserters or other foreigners".

The Swiss mercenaries were allowed to keep the distinctive red coats which had distinguished them prior to 1792, with different facings identifying each regiment.

All six Swiss mercenaries units were disbanded in 1830 following the final overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy.

Swiss mercenaries units saw active service against Portugal, against rebellions in Catalonia, in the War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Polish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession, and against Britain in the American Revolutionary War.

At the Battle of Bailen, the Swiss mercenaries regiments pressed into French service defected back to the Spanish Army under Reding.

Swiss mercenaries fighting in the ranks of the Spanish army generally followed its organization, tactics and dress.

The Swiss mercenaries regiments were however distinguished by their blue coats, in contrast to the white uniforms of the Spanish line infantry.

Swiss mercenaries regiments were employed by both the Dutch Republic and the Dutch East India Company for service in the Cape Colony and the East Indies.

In 1781, Charles-Daniel de Meuron, a former colonel of the French Swiss mercenaries Guard, founded his own mercenary regiment under the name Regiment de Meuron, first serving the Dutch East India Company, and from 1796, the British East India Company.

Regiment de Watteville was a Swiss mercenaries regiment founded by Louis de Watteville and recruited from regiments that served between 1799 and 1801 in the Austrian army but in British pay.

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One such example were the Swiss mercenaries regiments serving under Francis II of the Two Sicilies, who defended Gaeta in 1860 during the Italian War of Unification.

Swiss mercenaries citizens served in the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War, although purely on an individual and voluntary basis.

Plot of George Bernard Shaw's comedy Arms and the Man is focused on a fictional Swiss mercenary serving in the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War; there is no evidence of actual such mercenaries in that war.