Swiss Mercenaries
Encyclopedia : S : SW : SWI : Swiss Mercenaries
During the Late Middle Ages, mercenary forces grew in importance in Europe, as veterans from the Hundred Years' War preferred to continue living a soldier's life rather than abandoning the military. Swiss mercenaries (Reisläufer) in particular were valued for their loyalty and skills, and several European countries—mainly the Netherlands and France—had Swiss Pikemen regiments in their armed forces under treaties with the various Swiss cantons.
The native term Reisläufer literally means "one who goes to war" and is derived from Middle High German Reise meaning "military campaign."
The Swiss mercenaries were some of the most elite forces of the late fifteenth century and they helped to disintegrate the order of chivalry as well as the feudal standard. They were preceded by the English longbowmen, and succeeded by the Landknechts, who adopted Swiss tactics to produce a force that dominated Europe for years.
After the Burgundy Wars, the Swiss pikemen who made up most of Switzerland's force began to break away from the cantons to be hired by other countries. Their fighting abilities reached their zenith between 1480-1500, until the Battle of Biccoca and the Battle of Pavia, when combined French and German forces defeated them.
Swiss mercenary regiments organized themselves a little differently than the cantonal forces and their sizes varied greatly. Their forces were divided into the vanguard, centre and rearward (not to be confused with rearguard, which means a force used to defend the rear of a retreating army). Rarely were the vanguard, centre, and rearward forces the same size. Their tactics were very similar to those of the Swiss at Sempach and Arbedo, and in the fields of Grandson and Nancy, when battles were fought with a few phalanxes of pikemen. Such pike squares made a cavalry charge nearly useless, but they were vunerable to firearms (as seen in the battle of St. Jakob an der Birs). The Swiss mercenaries did deploy handguns and artillery of their own, however many were reluctant to use them in battle. Despite the fact that firearms would penetrate even the finest armour, they were also very imprecise, slow-loading, and susceptible to damp conditions.
Swiss mercenary soldiers came from all parts of Switzerland, but Unterwalden (made up of two cantons, Nidwalden and Obwalden) contributed the most mercenaries. The Swiss mercenaries scouted the fields with mounted crossbowmen, organized in teams of five to fifteen, although ten was the most common.
In the end, the Swiss mercenaries were defeated by the Spanish sword and buckler men, the arquebusiers of the Landknecht and the earthworks of the French. When confronting the Swiss mercenaries, the Spanish first halted them with their own pikemen, then used their sword and buckler men to crouch under the rows of pikes and to slaughter the lightly armoured Swiss infantry. The German arquebusiers simply fired into the Swiss square, rank and file, while the French stopped the pike square with their earthworks before opening a gap in the phalanx with their own firearms and engaging the Swiss mercenaries in hand-to-hand combat.
Since 1859, only one mercenary unit has been permitted under the Swiss constitution, certainly the most famous of all: the Vatican's Swiss Guard, which has been protecting the Pope for the last five centuries.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.