French Praetorian Guards

What do I mean with this:

How possible is it for France to have an elite Army as the Praetorian Guards/Janissary Corps? The PoD is 1500.

Bonus: have it become powerful enough to depose kings if they wished.
 
What about the Grenadier divisions?

Other then that, a Napoleonic victory could easily see something very similar to Praetorian Guards, seeing as how Napoleon seemed to have some sort of Rome fetish and all that.
 
The big barrier alot of Europe ran into in developing large elite formations domestically was that it was cheaper and quicker to just buy up a force pre-made from the Swiss. Have the Cantons not sign the Perpetual Peace with France and have them remain divided between differing forgein influences and you remove the possability of a dependable Swiss Guard. In that case,you could easily see the Royal Guard developing into a self-contained "pike and shot" force in the mid 1500"s, particularly if it acts as a core around which the noble and mercenary forces are expected to cohalence in the event of a major war.
 
There's always the Imperial Guard, which was also partially composed by mamluks. Napoleon had a mamluk as his personal valet.
 

Kaze

Banned
How about the Swiss Guard? The Hundred Swiss were created in 1480 when Louis XI retained a Swiss company for his personal guard. The Cent Suisses company was disbanded after Louis XIV left Versailles in October 1789. It was, however, re-founded on 15 July 1814 with an establishment of 136 guardsmen and eight officers. The Hundred Swiss accompanied Louis XVIII into exile in Belgium the following year and returned with him to Paris following the Battle of Waterloo. The unit then resumed its traditional role of palace guards at the Tuileries but in 1817 it was replaced by a new guard company drawn from the French regiments of the Royal Guard.

Or the Musketeers? More info here --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musketeers_of_the_Guard

As for Napoleon - he had his Grenadiers, his elite Troops which were only deployed when battles go desperate, and 8 out of 10 battles once they are in it is a Napoleonic Victory ( I do not count Borodino as a victory, it was a draw).
 
Well, you have the current Gardes Républicains whose role it to guard the president and other high officials.
It's a literal pretorian guard!
 
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