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The Pontifical Swiss Guard, [note 1] also known as the Papal Swiss Guard or simply Swiss Guard, [4] is an armed force and honour guard unit maintained by the Holy See that protects the Pope and the Apostolic Palace within the territory of the Vatican City State.
The earliest Swiss Guard unit to be established on a permanent basis was the Hundred Swiss (Cent-Suisses), which served at the French court from 1490 to 1817. This small force was complemented in 1616 by a Swiss Guards regiment. In the 18th and early 19th centuries several other Swiss Guard units existed for periods in various European courts.
Swiss Guard: Pope Julius II Papal States Vatican City: Although the Swiss Guard was founded in 1506 and is one of the oldest active military units presently in existence, they were disbanded and reorganized multiple times. The most recent iteration of the Swiss Guard began in 1814, after being disbanded in 1809. [61] [62] 1842 Engineer Regiment
The Swiss Guards regiment, the most senior of the twelve Swiss mercenary regiments in French service, was essentially identical to the French Guards in organization and equipment, other than wearing a red uniform as opposed to the blue coats of the French corps. The Swiss adopted the musket in increasingly large numbers as the seventeenth ...
The 1st Swiss Regiment (French: 1ère Régiment Suisse) was a Swiss mercenary line infantry regiment in the French Imperial Army during the Napoleonic Wars.During the expansion of the Imperial Army in 1803, Napoleon decreed the formation of four Swiss mercenary regiments, one of these later becoming the famed 1st Swiss.
From 1996 to 2001, the Swiss Armed Forces were present in Bosnia and Herzegovina with headquarters in Sarajevo. Their mission, as part of the Swiss Peacekeeping Missions, was to provide logistic and medical support to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), protection duties and humanitarian demining. The mission was ...
In wartime the six wings of the air force would increase in size to allow for high intensity operations. In wartime the structure of the Swiss air wings would be as follows: For the three (1st, 2nd, 3rd) transport wings the example given is for the 2nd Air Transport Wing (peacetime units in bold): [37] [38]
Since the early twentieth century the Guard has returned to its original practice of recruiting only Swiss nationals. As of 2005, the Guard had 134 members. All recruits complete basic military training with the Swiss Army before transferring to the Vatican, [9] and must be Catholics and at least 174 cm (5 ft 8.5 in) in height. [10]