AH Challenge; English Swiss Guard regiment

As most people know the sole remaining military force of the Vatican is the Swiss Guard, however at one time other nations had Swiss mercenaries guarding their monarchs, most notably the French.

Your challenge, should you decide to accept it, is to have a Swiss regiment serve in the British Army to the present day as part of the Guards Division. The regiment has to be truely Swiss, i.e. recruited from Switzerland, not just a British regiment carrying on the traditions of a long gone foreign unit. It also had to be an effective part of the army, not just a ceremonial unit.
 
Hhmm. Well that might be a bit difficult if Switzerland is going to remain a neutral country in the timelime, the Swiss Guard is easy enough to overlook since it's so small and the Vatican post Papal States doesn't do warfare unlike unlike if it were an effective regiment of an imperial power. If you can work around this then it's not too hard since they already have the Brigade of Gurkhas.
 
I'd considered that myself. The only answer I could come up with is that BSG would be grandfathered in when Switzerland banned it's citizens from serving in foreign armies. It's not a particularly elegant solution and it's rather deus ex machina but it could happen if the regiment has a long enough history for Britain to want it enough to convince the Swiss that it's worth the latter's while to accomodate the major industrial nation of the 19th Century.
 
Since the Swiss mercenaries' heyday was far earlier than the Acts of Union 1707, the ensuing butterflies mean that for the Swiss to serve in any British state's army would butterfly it away.
 
The easiest way to do this is to have Britain control Switerland, somehow.

The only 'foreign' forces in the British army are, IIRC, from areas that were part of the Empire, had been, or were very closely related.

The Gurkhas had been controlled by Britain, even if Nepal is now independent.

The KGL (King's German Legion of the Napoleonic wars) was (At least nominally) from the British king's OTHER possession - Hanover. So, they weren't actually part of the British/English army....
 

archaeogeek

Banned
The easiest way to do this is to have Britain control Switerland, somehow.

The only 'foreign' forces in the British army are, IIRC, from areas that were part of the Empire, had been, or were very closely related.

The Gurkhas had been controlled by Britain, even if Nepal is now independent.

The KGL (King's German Legion of the Napoleonic wars) was (At least nominally) from the British king's OTHER possession - Hanover. So, they weren't actually part of the British/English army....

The Hessian regiments were raised from german principalities though, so they did use foreign regiments from outside when straits were dire.

I suspect the best way to get this to happen, though, is that either it comes through scottish service, or Britain either a) remains catholic or b) becomes calvinist. Religious compatibility is not 100% essential but i suspect it might help; the main users of Swiss mercenaries seem to have been the Netherlands, and the catholic countries, from what I can tell.
 

Susano

Banned
The Hessian regiments were raised from german principalities though, so they did use foreign regiments from outside when straits were dire.
The Hessian regiments were, IIRC, regular regiments of the army of Hesse-Kassel (and err, Waldeck, wasnt it?). As such, the often used term "Hessian mercenaries" is even the wrong - it were allied troops.

Religious compatibility is not 100% essential
Meh. Switzerland had (and has) Catholic and Protestant cantons. In fact, that more so than languages was the major divide most of the time. Okay, yes, the Protestant cantons were and are Calvinist, but I think Britain most of the time made no difference between types of protestants. At least not in foreign policy, domestic politics about non-conformists not withstanding, heh.
 
I think it's unlikely that the Swiss Legion recruited in 1856 for the Crimea in defiance of Swiss legislation about mercenaries could become a Guard regiment (or even have survived as an odd adjunct to the regular establishment). Moving backwards in time, you could see some form of amalgamation of the many Swiss regiments which served the crown in the Napoleonic wars- de Meuron, de Roll and de Wattville. However, it doesn't seem probable that these would rise to the elite heights of becoming a Guards regiment.

Best bet to me seems to be William III somehow having a Swiss battalion when he crosses the Channel. By the mid-1690s there would be two English and one Dutch Guards regiments (English establishment) and one Scottish regiment (Scottish establishment). It might be tempting to round these off with a solid, loyal Protestant Guards battalion on the Irish establishment which, if it survived and history pans out much the same, could slot into the British establishment as the 4th Regiment of Foot Guards round about 1801.
 
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