Swiss troops in Prussian service

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Brandenburg eagle

There were two Swiss troops in Prussian (Prussian) service between 1696 and 1848: a palace guard and a special battalion.

The Swiss palace guard was responsible for the security of the elector and the interior of his palaces from 1696 to 1713. The Guard Rifle Battalion ( Bataillon des Tirailleurs de la Garde ) emerged in 1804 from the dual role of Neuchâtel as a Prussian principality and a canton of the Swiss Confederation .

Swiss troops in foreign service was the name ofthe paid service of commanded, whole troop bodies abroad,regulatedby the authorities of the Confederation byinternational treaties . These treaties contained a chapter that regulated military affairs: the so-called surrender or private surrender when one of the contracting parties was a private military contractor.

Overview of the Swiss troops in Prussian service

Electorate of Brandenburg 1618–1701
# designation year
Elector Friedrich III. of Brandenburg 1688–1713
Duke in Prussia 1688–1701
1 (1) Swiss palace guard 1696-1713
Kingdom of Prussia 1701–1871
# designation year
King Friedrich I in Prussia 1701–1713
Elector of Brandenburg 1688–1713
King Friedrich Wilhelm III. von Prussen 1797–1840
Elector of Brandenburg 1797–1806
2 (2) Guard Rifle Battalion 1814-1848
King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia 1840–1861

The palace guard of Friedrich III./I. 1696

Swiss Guard at the coronation of Frederick I in Koenigsberg in 1701
Officer and soldier of the Prussian Swiss Guard.jpg

His predecessors were accompanied by an ad hoc unit of 150 men for their protection , the so-called “Königswache”, when they visited the duchy of Kleve and Grafschaft Mark , which had been awarded to Brandenburg at the beginning of the 17th century .

Margrave and Elector Duke Friedrich III. von Brandenburg switched to a standing palace guard in 1696.

Name,
duration of use		 (1) Swiss Palace Guard 1696–1713
Year,
contractual partner		 1696 at the request of Margrave and Elector Duke Friedrich III. from Brandenburg,

" ... to provide him with the team for the establishment of a" distinguished "bodyguard ... "

Completed surrender with the Protestant places.
Stock,
formation		 1 company of 104 men with 24 officers and 80 soldiers, modeled on the French "Hundertschweizer" .
Owner,
commander,
namesake		 1696, the first commandant Colonel-Captain Imbert Rollaz du Rosey from Rolle; 1704, after his death until the unit was dissolved, followed by Colonel-Captain Sigmund von Erlach from Bern.
Origin squad,
troop		 from the Protestant places, advertised in Basel, disembarked in Frankfurt a / M in 1697.
Use,
events		 Deployed as a guard at the electoral court of Brandenburg, responsible for the interior of the margravial, later royal palaces.

The company accompanied Friedrich III. to Königsberg for his self-coronation as Friedrich I, King in Prussia.

After his death in 1713, the Swiss palace guard was disbanded.

The special battalion «for special service for Her Majesty» 1814

The special battalion Bataillon des Tirailleurs de la Garde ( Guard Rifle Battalion ) emerged from the special situation of Neuchâtel , which as a principality was informally allied with the Old Confederation .

Uniforms of the Guard Rifle Battalion 1815

In 1707, Friedrich I , King of Prussia, preferred by Bern by name , succeeded the extinct house of Orléans-Longueville in the Principality of Neuchâtel-Valangin. He held the title of "sovereign Prince of Orange, Neuchâtel and Valangin", but had the principality governed by governors. These resided in the castle of Neuchâtel or in Berlin and introduced numerous innovations.

In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Neuchâtel was spared from occupation and the Helvetic Republic in 1798, unlike the Confederates under whose umbrella it had come under, but in 1806 in the Treaty of Paris, Prussia ceded Napoleon I.

He installed Field Marshal Louis-Alexandre Berthier as Prince of Neuchâtel. Berthier, who was never present himself, abdicated in favor of Prussia as early as 1814 after the fall of Napoleon.

This prompted Friedrich Wilhelm III. in the same year to visit, the first and only one of a Prussian king, in Neuchâtel and for agreement, Neuchâtel - 1815 simultaneously recognized by the Congress of Vienna as a "Swiss Canton and Prussian Principality" - still in 1814 on the basis of the Federal Treaty as the 20th canton in to let the Swiss Confederation join.

With the intention of securing royal benevolence and with the ulterior motive of being able to get rid of unadjusted returnees and other uprooted people from the Napoleonic wars when it was recruited, the Neuchâtel State Council then asked Friedrich Wilhelm III. for permission to set up a «special battalion for special service for Her Majesty». After which, after his immediate consent, the Prussian battalion des Tirailleurs de la Garde was set up in Paris in 1814 .

Name,
duration of use		 (2) Guard Rifle Battalion 1814–1848
Year,
contractual partner		 1814 surrender with 15 articles, concluded by the Neuchâtel State Council with Friedrich Wilhelm III., King in Prussia
Stock,
formation		 1 battalion of 429 men in 4 companies of 4 platoons with 22 soldiers per platoon.

The surrender set the battalion's target number of 23 officers, 40 non-commissioned officers and 352 soldiers, including 9 musicians and 5 specialists.

Owner,
commander,
namesake		 until 1817 under the command of Major Charles-Gustave de Meuron from Saint-Sulpice (represented by Major Johann Paul Franz von Lucadou , originally from Morges, during a four-month vacation in 1815 ), followed by Prussian commanders: 1817 Major Konstantin von Witzleben , 1818 Major Friedrich von Tilly, 1829 Lieutenant Colonel Ferdinand von Grabowski, 1830 Lieutenant Colonel Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand von Thadden, 1840 Lieutenant Colonel Karl August von Brandenstein, 1847 to the end of 1848 Major Gustav von Arnim
Origin squad, troop The recruitment of the Guard Rifle Battalion turned out to be much more difficult than the State Council had imagined.

The Neuchâtel offspring stalled, despite all efforts and ongoing reductions in requirements.

The existence and the level of the officers' corps only improved when more and more Prussian officers, initially detached and finally firmly assigned, came in.

The discipline, order and level of performance of the team of the Guard Rifle Battalion increased as soon as Prussian NCOs added the Neuchâtel veterans who had experienced Napoleonic services.

The promotion of the teams proved particularly difficult. The general tiredness of war, the distant and unknown Prussia as employer, the not consistently competitive pay and the foreign German language had a negative impact in Neuchâtel. As a result, the terms of surrender were repeatedly interpreted "more generously", which at times drastically increased the rejection rate of the Prussian eviction officer in Neuchâtel and the desertion rate of the team.

Use,
events		 The long, monotonous garrison service in Berlin was only interrupted by the daily drill , the popular target shooting exercises and the parades at the regular military and other celebrations.

In the course of time it was also possible to get most of the team used to the legendary Prussian discipline .

The Guard Rifle Battalion took part in a total of three campaigns with varying degrees of success.

In 1815 in a campaign against France in Paris, in which it was not used due to various shortcomings. Instead of returning to Berlin after graduation, large parts deserted - up to 50 men a day - and brought the commandant, Major de Meuron, into great difficulties, which he and others he finally put to an end by his resignation in 1817.

At the very end of the revolutionary year of 1848 in the street fighting in Berlin and in 1849 in the campaign against Denmark, however, the remaining Neuchâtel soldiers stood out for their exceptional fighting spirit and great bravery. But then the end of the Swiss troops in Prussian service had already heralded.

Since the Guard Rifle Battalion in 1848 only consisted of a minority of Swiss, it was, due to the power of fact, tacitly, informally and without an official resolution no longer recruited in Neuchâtel, but from 1848 in Potsdam.

Assigned to the Prussian Army as light infantry in the Guard Corps , it was finally disbanded in 1918 after the First World War

In 1859, after the so-called Neuchâtel trade , Prussia was forced de jure to renounce the Principality of Neuchâtel, but to this day not the associated title.

Even after the end of the Neuchâtel period of the Guards Rifle Battalion, Prussia remained a good address for Swiss officers who stayed there for training or in service and some of them also settled down until the end of the First World War .

See also

literature

  • Beat Emmanuel May (by Romainmotier): Histoire Militaire de la Suisse et celle des Suisses dans les differents services de l'Europe , Tome VII, JP Heubach et Comp., Lausanne 1788, OCLC 832583553 .
  • Karl Müller von Friedberg : Chronological representation of the federal surrender of troops to foreign powers. Huber and Compagnie, St. Gallen 1793, OCLC 716940663 .
  • Auguste Bachelin: Jean-Louis: a novel from Old Neuchâtel. Attinger Frères, Neuchâtel 1895, OCLC 605084540 .
  • Eugène Vodoz: Le Bataillon Neuchâtelois des Tirailleurs de la Garde de 1814 à 1848. Attinger Frères, Neuchâtel 1902, OCLC 602169922 .
  • Alfred von Besser : History of the Guard Rifle Battalion. Ernst Siegfried Mittler and Son, Berlin 1910, OCLC 72018836
  • Moritz von Wattenwil: The Swiss in foreign military service. Separately printed from the Berner Tagblatt , Bern 1930, OCLC 72379925 .
  • Paul de Vallière, Henry Guisan , Ulrich Wille : Loyalty and honor, history of the Swiss in foreign service (translated by Walter Sandoz). Les editions d'art ancien, Lausanne 1940, OCLC 610616869 .
  • Rudolf Gugger: Prussian advertising in the Confederation in the 18th century (= sources and research on Brandenburg and Prussian history , Volume 12), Duncker and Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-08760-7 (dissertation University of Bern 1995, 301 pages ), OCLC 38132858 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Moritz von Wattenwil: The Swiss in foreign military service. Separate print from the Berner Tagblatt , Bern 1930
  2. ^ A b Heinrich Türler, Viktor Attinger, Marcel Godet: Historisch-Biographisches Lexikon der Schweiz , fourth volume, Neuchâtel 1927.
  3. ^ A b Alfred von Welck: Swiss soldiers in service to the Electorate of Saxony 1656-1681 , Dr. Hubert Ermisch, New Archive for Saxon History, Volume 13, p. 224, Wilhelm Baensch, Königlich Sächsische Hofverlagsbuchhandlung, Dresden 1892.
  4. ↑ Gérôme Guisolan: de Rolaz, Imbert. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  5. ^ Barbara Braun-Bucher: von Erlach, Sigmund. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  6. ^ A b Eugène Vodoz: Le bataillon neuchâtelois des tirailleurs de la garde de 1814 à 1848. In: Revue Militaire Suisse , Volume 46, 1901.
  7. ↑ Cyrille Gigandet: Meuron, Charles-Gustave de. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  8. ↑ Marti-Weissenbach, Karin: May, Beat Emmanuel (from Romainmotier). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  9. ↑ Klauser, Eric-André: Bachelin, Auguste. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  10. ^ Meuwly, Olivier: Valliere, Paul de. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .