Swiss troops in Saxon service
There were two Swiss troops in Saxon service . One was based on contracts with federal authorities: the Swiss Guard . The second, the Malaraqui Swiss Regiment , although so named, was not actually a Swiss force.
Swiss troops in foreign service was the name of the paid service of commanded, whole troop bodies abroad,regulatedby the authorities of the Swiss 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 Swiss troops in Saxon service
| Electorate of Saxony 1356–1806 | ||
| # | designation | year |
| Elector Johann Georg II of Saxony 1656–1680 | ||
| 1 | (1) Swiss Guard | 1656-1680 1725-1757 1763-1814 |
| King Friedrich August I of Saxony 1694–1733, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania 1697–1706 and 1709–1733 |
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| 2 | (2) Malararquian Swiss Regiment | 1704-1706 |
| Kingdom of Saxony 1806–1918 | ||
| General Nikolai Grigoryevich Repnin-Volkonsky Governor General of Saxony 1813–1814 |
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The Palace Guard 1656
In 1656, Elector Johann Georg II of Saxony , as became fashionable among the princes of Europe after the Thirty Years' War , took on a Swiss guard as palace guard for his personal protection and, above all, to display his princely power.
| Name, duration of use | (1) Swiss Guard 1656–1680, 1725–1757, 1763–1814 | |||
| Year, contractual partner | 1656 contracts of Elector Johann Georg II of Saxony for the recruitment of mercenaries with the reformed cantons of Basel , Bern , Zurich .
1730 The surrender was subsequently completed by Elector Friedrich August I of Saxony, King of Poland in personal union, with the cantons of Bern and Zurich, and with the Prince Abbot of St. Gallen. |
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| Stock, formation | 1 company of 128 men, modeled on the French "Hundred Swiss" .
Stock according to team list:
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| Owner, commander, namesake | Commanders:
1656–1669 Lieutenant Colonel Isaac de Constantin de Magny, from a noble Savoy family; 1669–1680 Lieutenant Colonel (1676 Colonel) Johann Kaspar Escher vom Luchs from Zurich; 1680–1725 no Swiss bodyguard; 1725–1733 Captain Pierre de Prohinques, baron from Beaujolais, France, previously in command of the foot satellite guard, deposed in 1733; 1733–1742 Major General Georg Hubert von Diesbach (von Belleroche) from Freiburg; 1742–1757 Colonel (1744 Major General, 1752 Lieutenant General) Taddäus Ô'Meagher, Irish nobleman from the lordship of Ikerrin near Roscrea in County Tipperary ; 1757–1763 no Swiss bodyguard ; 1763–1765 Lieutenant General Taddäus Ô'Meagher; 1765-1769 k. A., position probably not occupied Colonel (1784 major general, 1790 lieutenant general, 1799 general) Johann Joseph von Griset (von Forel ) from Freiburg from 1769 until his dissolution in 1814 |
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| Origin squad, troop | As a rule, the commanders and officers came from the native Swiss nobility.
The team was initially recruited by the Protestant dynasty in the Reformed towns of Bern, Zurich, Schaffhausen and Basel and supplemented by Saxony. The names on a draft list from 1730, with no denomination of origin of the troop members, suggests that in addition to Saxony, Welsch-Swiss later entered the corps. |
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| Use, events |
Partisan of the Saxon Swiss Guard from the 18th century
The Saxon Swiss Guard was never involved in combat, was responsible for the security inside the electoral or royal palaces, mostly stationed in Dresden and mainly a representation force for special occasions. For example, 12 Swiss people in yellow, red and black clothes with red feathers on their hats accompanied Elector Johann Georg II as his bodyguard to the 1658 Emperor election of Habsburg Leopold I in Frankfurt am Main. Or in 1666 the Red Swiss (musketeers) and the yellow bodyguards stood on the Swiss (halberdiers) as the electoral prince Johann Georg entered Dresden. A crew list from 1788 provides information about the equipment and clothing of the guardsmen: the gala uniform and the slightly more modest work uniform, in changing fashionable designs, puffed and slit, mostly the officers in blue-yellow and decorated with wide silver braids, ribbons and cords as well the crew in yellow and blue seem to have been almost more important than the armament. The halberdiers of the Saxon Swiss Guard were armed with the partisan and a long rapier as a side gun. The partisan is a polearm and was mainly used by the life guards at German royal courts and as an officer's weapon in Holland and Scandinavia. The founder of the Swiss Guard was Prince Elector Johann Georg II. In 1656, he agreed with the authorities of the federal state of Basel to recruit 20 Swiss mercenaries to increase the existing satellite bodyguard. After the death of his father, he became elector in the same year, but with them and further official recruiting in Basel, Bern and Zurich he built up a new house troop of 128 men as a halberdier company. He handed over their leadership to Lieutenant Colonel Jsaac de Magny as commandant with Johann Kaspar Escher from Zurich as lieutenant. His employment was a requirement of the contract with the Zurich authorities, who, concerned for the well-being of their fellow citizens, gave him instructions:
Due to friction with Magny, Escher soon submitted his departure. However, he returned in 1661, promoted to lieutenant captain, as the commandant of an additional musketeer company, recruited in Basel, Bern, Zurich and Appenzell. In 1666 , 132 men were counted for the halberdier company, known as Swiss volunteers, and 200 men for the musketeer company, the so-called bodyguard . When complaints about inadequate pay and poor food as well as complaints about unfair treatment and unreasonable punishments appeared on the agenda of the Federal Diet , the elector dissolved the Musketeer Company in 1669, released Magny and handed over command of the remaining halberdier company to Escher. In 1680, after the Peace of Nijmegen , Saxony had to dissolve most of its army for financial reasons and released Escher with the 130 men of the halberdier company. Because of the plague, which was rampant in Dresden at the same time, the Bernese in Kaiserstuhl, the Basler in Laufenburg, the Appenzeller in Rheinau and the Zürcher in Rafz with their families had to stay in quarantine on the other side of the Rhine for two months. The settlement of their outstanding payment claims took even longer. In 1725, King August II the Strong decided to revive the former Swiss bodyguard. He therefore changed the name of the still existing local footstrabant guard to Swiss Guard and that of their captain Prohinques to Swiss captain and had him gradually replace their 88 men with Swiss mercenaries from Zurich, Bern, Sankt Gallen and Friborg. Challenged by the military drama of Prussia and the Lange Kerls during a visit to Berlin in 1728, he invited to his famous Zeithainer pleasure camp in 1730 . In the same year he concluded an official surrender with the Confederates and expanded his Swiss Guard with native Swiss from St. Gallen, Bern and Friborg to 133 men. The recruited had to have a height of 77 to 78 inches (= 1.82–1.84 meters) according to Dresden measurements . In 1733 Major General Diesbach took command of the unit. Captain Prohinques, bon vivant and soldier of fortune, who married an illegitimate daughter of Friedrich August II and therefore enjoyed the protection of the king, was dismissed and dismissed after his death for multiple embezzlement. In 1742, after Diesbach's death, command of the Saxon Swiss Guard passed to Colonel Ô'Meagher. He commanded it, with an interruption in the Seven Years' War , during which it was dissolved, until his death in 1765. In 1769 Colonel Griset became the last Saxon Swiss captain after a brief period in which the position was not filled . In 1814 Nikolai Grigorjewitsch Repnin-Wolkonski , the Russian and Prussian governor-general in Saxony appointed after the Battle of Leipzig , finally disbanded the Saxon Swiss Guard. |
The Malaraquische Swiss Regiment 1704
Just as adventurous as its Saxon name sounds, was the fate of the Malaraqui Swiss regiment. It was formed from prisoners of war.
prehistory
Franz Lorenz Greder from Solothurn, had acquired 12 of the 26 companies of the guard regiment founded in 1670 by Cardinal Egon von Fürstenberg , Bishop of Strasbourg and Prime Minister of the Electorate of Cologne , mainly in Electorate of Cologne . To distinguish it from the simultaneously existing, official Greder regiment , the French 54th line regiment of his youngest brother Balthasar, his Greder regiment was sometimes also called Deutsch-Greder .
Beat Jakob II. Zurlauben from Zug, a former lieutenant and captain in the aforementioned Fürstenberg Guard regiment, had recruited his Zurlauben regiment from 22 companies in 3 battalions with a private capitulation in 1687 . Its crew came from all over Germany and Wallonia and it also had deserters from other services among them.
These regiments Deutsch-Greder and Zurlauben were German and Walloon troops, although they were in Swiss possession and largely led by Swiss, but not actual Swiss troops, as defined above in the introduction. They were incorporated into the troops on the French side and almost completely destroyed in the battle of Höchstädt.
In the War of the Spanish Succession , Louis XIV's French-Bavarian contingent on the Danube near Höchstädt in 1704 was faced with the most brilliant generals of the anti-French alliance and of their time, John Churchill , 1st Duke of Marlborough, and Prince Eugene of Savoy . It became Marshal Tallards right wing Lieutenant-General Philippe de Palluau Clérambault encircled in Blindheim. His troops, including 1,000 men each from the Deutsch-Greder and Zurlauben regiments, fiercely defended the place when Clérambault panicked and tried to swim across the Danube and drowned in the process.
His deputy, Field Marshal Charles de Roye de la Rochefoucauld de Blanzac, then stopped the fight and large parts of the crew of Blindheim were captured. Sources in the New Saxon Archive speak of 29 captains, 33 officers and 60 non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the Deutsch-Greder regiment who were in Dillingen and of 28 captains, 59 officers and 200 non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the Zurlauben regiment who were imprisoned by the Allies in Weilsenburg . Zurlauben did not lead his regiment himself, but as a lieutenant general a French brigade in the central section of Höchstädt, where he was so badly wounded that he died a month later in Wengen monastery in Ulm.
The decree of Emperor Leopold I.
In the end, the great winners of the battle near Höchstädt, Duke Marlboro and Prinz Eugen, are said to have split almost 9,000 captured soldiers in half. For the extraordinarily large number of prisoners of war, extraordinary solutions were evidently necessary. The remnants of the Greder and Zurlauben regiments, for example, thanks to a decree from Emperor Leopold I :
“ … But if Frantzosen had a whole Swiss corpo of battallion or regiment, or scattered here and there some from such a nation, the corpo would be dissolvated, and the soldiers from it both as officers and other particulares afterwards to dismiss, but with the sworn condition that they no longer bear arms for a certain period of time against me, the kingdom and the allyrians, ' "
to be recruited again immediately, more or less voluntarily, by the richly loyal Saxony. Major General René de La Tour du Pin de Malerargues, commissioned by August II with the task, built the Saxon, so-called Malararquian Swiss Regiment on these prisoners of war.
| Name, duration of use |
(2) Malararquian Swiss Regiment 1704–1706 |
| Year, contractual partner | 1704 without surrender to federal authorities |
| Stock, formation | The order from King August II in January 1704 to Major General Malerargues was to recruit a "Regiment des Gardes Suisses" by June 1. It should consist of Swiss, French and other impeccable people between the ages of 20 and 40. The budget was a staff of 15 men and 12 companies of 128 men, including the cadre |
| Owner, commander, namesake | excavated by Major General René de la Tour du Pin de Malerarques (from a French, Huguenot aristocratic family from the Cevennes who were resident in Geneva in 1685, in 1705 in Lausanne and a short time later also in Bern), who apparently made no attempt made a contract with the Confederates.
He transferred the management of the regiment and the 1st battalion to his brother, Chamberlain and Colonel César de la Tour du Pin de Malerargues, and that of the 2nd battalion to Lieutenant Colonel Henri François de Mestral de Vincy et Coinsin from Aubonne |
| Origin squad, troop | Malerargues, under time pressure from his king, tried to fulfill his order with prisoners from the French regiments Greder, Zurlauben and other French troops, which had been destroyed near Höchstädt. By November 1704, however, he had only been able to recruit about 800 men |
| Use, events | The regiment spent the winter in Görlitz and then returned to Dresden in the spring to a camp "on the meadow by the Elbe". The next winter quarters were also in the Elbe city. In the spring of 1706, Field Marshal Matthias Johann von der Schulenburg and the entire Saxon army moved to Silesia in the Great Northern War .
Battle of Fraustadt 1706
The Malararquian Swiss Regiment was part of Field Marshal von der Schulenburg's troops, which were completely destroyed by the Swedes in the Battle of Fraustadt (now the Polish Wschowa ) in February . First the numerically outnumbered, opposing Swedish troops of Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Rehnskiöld managed to capture the entire Saxon artillery park with a surprise attack. Then the Saxon cavalry took in front of the Swedish Reissaus, before they seriously intervened in the battle. When the poorly armed and exhausted Russian and Saxon infantry saw their own cavalry flee from the battlefield, some troops on the left wing were the first to lay down their arms and run over to the enemy or over the frozen march. The Malararquian Swiss Regiment fought resolutely in the front line on the right wing near Geyersdorf, despite considerable losses, until it retreated from the Swedish superiority and also put down its arms on the march back before Fraustadt. A large part of the remaining troops are said to have been killed by the Swedes. Colonel Malerargues himself was wounded and taken prisoner. According to Fraustadt, he and his brother are missing in the Saxon sources. The Saxon army was as good as and the remnants of the Deutsch-Greder and Zurlauben regiments were finally destroyed. The Swedes' victory was total. Schulenburg later tried to rebuild the army of Saxony, also by recruiting Swiss mercenaries. Apparently Mestral had escaped the fate of Fraustadt. It was later reported by a “Swiss” battalion under his command. But even then it was not an official Swiss force in the Saxon service. |
See also
Web links
- Military Electorate of Saxony 1547–1806
- New archive for Saxon history and antiquity, volume 14
- the French 62nd Line Regiment (French)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Anselm Zurfluh: Thirty Years War. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- ^ A b c Heinrich Türler, Viktor Attinger, Marcel Godet: Historisch-Biographisches Lexikon der Schweiz. Fourth volume, Neuchâtel 1927.
- ^ A b c d Hugo Schneider: A partisan from the Saxon Swiss Guard. Annual report / Swiss National Museum Zurich, Volume 53, 1944.
- ↑ a b c d e f Alfred von Welck: Swiss soldiers in the Saxon service 1701–1815. New archive for Saxon history and antiquity, editor Dr. Hubert Ermisch, fourteenth volume, Wilhelm Baensch, Königlich Sächsische Hofverlagsbuchhandlung, Dresden 1893.
- ^ Soldier in the role of a Fourier .
- ↑ Benoît de Diesbach Belleroche: Diesbach, Georges Hubert de (de Belleroche). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- ^ Marie-Anne Heimo: Griset de Forel, Jean. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- ↑ Erich Meyer: Greder, Franz Lorenz. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- ↑ Jérome Madival: Archives Parliament Aires de 1787 à 1860. Paris in 1886, Kraus Reprint, Lichtenstein 1969th
- ↑ Erich Meyer: Greder, Balthasar. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- ↑ Urs Amacher: Zurlauben, Beat Jakob. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- ↑ Stéphane Capot: La chambre de l'Édit de Castres (1579–1679) , École des Chartes, Paris 1998.