The Swiss Guard has been in the news of late for the celebration of its 500th anniversary, celebrated officially in January 2006. However, as with many historical events, a cluster of anniversaries marks the debut of the Swiss Guard as the Pope's special defense force, from Pope Julius II's letter of June 21, 1505, inviting them to Rome, to their departure from Switzerland on September 24, 1506, to their arrival in the Eternal City on January 22, 1507. The parade uniform of the Guards today, in the Renaissance style, with morion, cuirass, and halberd,¹ reminds the spectator of the Guard's origin during the terrible convulsions of the Italian Wars.²

The Swiss

On January 22, 1506, at sunset, 150 Helvetian mercenaries commanded by Captain Kaspar von Silenen, of Canton Uri, entered the Vatican through the Porta del Popolo (the People's Gate). There they received the blessing of Pope Julius II: such was the official act founding this special corps, which today can be considered one of the oldest armies in the world.

Why the Swiss, and why Julius II? Without going all the way back to the Roman historian Tacitus, who vaunted the valor of the Helvetian warriors even then, the reputation of Swiss soldiers was solidly established at the end of the Middle Ages after the defeats inflicted by them on the great Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Temerarious. Then, Switzerland was a poor, over-populated country, and since the mountains did not produce enough to sustain so many mouths, they emigrated. Many Swiss men would go off to be mercenaries for seasonal employment, fighting during the summer so as to be able to feed their families during the winter, living off their soldier's pay and booty.

Julius II

In 1494, the King of France, Charles VIII, established a permanent guard manned by Swiss: the Hundred Swiss. Pope Julius II followed the king's example a dozen years later. As the bishop of Lausanne, before he became the Cardinal Giulano della Rovere, he had followed the French to Naples, and had been able to experience for himself the loyalty of the Hundred Swiss. With a constitution of iron, born in a poor milieu, Franciscan, and having entered at a very young age into pontifical politics under the staff of his paternal uncle Sixtus IV, Julius II was struck by the disorder of an Italy divided amongst the Empire, Spain, and France, and ravaged by the interplay of alliances between princes, cities, and prelates. He feared that the Church would find itself subjugated to foreign interests and intentions. His entire politics would therefore tend toward re-establishing the Vatican's independence. This optic accounts for a number of his regime's accomplishments: great public works and the embellishment of Rome; the protection of the arts; reforms in agriculture, maritime and monetary law; ecclesiastical laws declaring null and void the election of a pope by simony and excommunicating anyone who would impede the free exercise of pontifical authority. The temporal power of the papacy was strengthened by upholding the authority of the Pope in the Papal States, reconquering lost territory, and evicting foreigners from Italy.

This was the background that elicited a complicated diplomacy and the understandable need to have good troops; thus, the recruitment of mercenaries, and for his personal service, the creation of the Swiss Guard.

1525: Pavia

Julius II's successors experienced even greater instability in the Italian wars. When Cardinal Julius de Medici was elected pope on November 19, 1523, taking the name of Clement VII, he believed he had found a clear compromise between the Holy Roman Emperor and the French faction. But the agreements with neither party held up, and in October 1524, France's King Francis I again occupied Milan, pushing Clement VII, for expediency's sake, to draw closer to France. Emperor Charles V's reaction was immediate: "I shall be avenged in Italy. Today or tomorrow. Martin Luther will perhaps be a big help."

The threat was made good: German foot soldiers, called lansquenets, and Spanish mercenaries upset the French and Swiss at Pavia on February 25, 1525. Francis I was taken prisoner–his captive children were not liberated until 1530 after payment of a heavy ransom. For Rome, it was a catastrophe: While the Colonna, partisans of the Empire, battled the Orsinni, friends of France, Clement VII was obliged to pay a heavy tribute to Charles V and make an alliance with him to keep the Imperial troops from heading towards the Eternal City. That event, however, was merely postponed: on the morning of May 6, 1527, the Imperial forces, after other diplomatic maneuvering, gave the assault. They staved in the Torrione Gate, invaded the Borgo Santo Spirito neighborhood and St. Peter's.

Heroic Stand

It was almost the end, and this was the moment for the Swiss Guard to distinguish itself. Assembled at the base of the obelisk which then stood near the Campo Santo Teutonico, guardsmen fought desperately; 147 halberdiers were massacred, and the commandant, Kaspar Roist, finished off by the Spanish before the eyes of his young wife, Elizabeth Klingler. The 42 survivors, commanded by Hercules Goldli, accompanied the flight of Clement VII to the Castel Sant'Angelo, through a secret passage that had been built in the walls of the Vatican by Alexander VI.

The Sack of Rome

After crossing the Sisto Bridge, the German foot soldiers and the Spanish pillaged Rome for a week. Nothing was spared: neither theft, nor rape, nor massacre, nor sacrilege. The tombs of the popes, including that of Julius II, were profaned. The dead numbered 12,000 and the booty some 10 million ducats.³

The Imperial forces, especially the Frundsberg lansquenets, were animated by antipapist hatred. Before the Castel Sant'Angelo, beneath the Pope's very eyes, a parody of a religious procession was organized, in which they demanded Clement VII to hand over to Luther the sails and the oars of the "Barque," the Church. The soldiers exclaimed: "Vivat Lutherus pontifex." The prior of the Canons of St. Augustine wrote: "Mali fuere Germani, pejores Itali, Hispani vero pessimi–“the Germans were bad, the Italians worse, and the Spanish worst of all."

The treaty that followed the Sack of Rome was scarcely less bad. Clement VII was forced to give up three citadels; several cities, including Modena, Parma, and Piacenza; and payment of monetary damages. The papal garrison comprised four companies of Germans and Spaniards. The Swiss Guard was suppressed, replaced by 200 German foot soldiers. The survivors, upon the Pope's intervention, had a right to be affected to the new guard; most of them did not take advantage of the offer out of hatred for the lansquenets.

A Discreet but Effective Rule

In 1548, the fluctuations of Italian politics led to the return of the Swiss Guard, but thereafter its role would be more discreet, closer to what it is today. The French Revolution had the same effect upon Swiss Guard as the Sack of Rome. In 1798, Pius VII had to leave the Eternal City and his Guard was disbanded. Reconstituted in 1800, disbanded again in 1809, it did not return to Rome definitively until 1814. The Franco-Prussian War that erupted in 1870 marked the end of the Church's temporal power, since Napoleon III saw himself constrained to pull his troops back into France. The Italian government had assured the Pope that the accords of September 1864 would be respected, but as soon as Napoleon III's fortunes began to wane, the Papal States were quickly encircled by the Kingdom of Italy's army.

Thus ended the period of centuries during which, because of the possession of the Papal States, the Sovereign Pontiff had required an army at his service. Thereafter the Swiss Guard's only duty would be to oversee the Pope's physical security and that of the Vatican City and the pontifical villa of Castel Gandolfo. The question posed by Stalin about the number of divisions at the Pope's disposition was surely moot, betraying a too carnal and myopic conception of the factors determining the vicissitudes of history.

Translated exclusively by Angelus Press from Fideliter, Jan.-Feb., 2006, pp.73-77.

¹ A morion is a metal, high-crested open helmet with the front and back edges turned upward. The color of the ostrich-feather crest indicates the Guardsmen's rank. The halberd is an 8-foot combination pike and battle-axe.

² The Italian Wars refers to the struggles in the late 15th and early 16th centuries between various nations in Europe. It began as a territorial dispute between Milan and Naples but became more involved as European nations chose sides.

³ The ducat is a gold coin that was used as a trade currency throughout Europe before World War I. Its weight is 3.494 grams, which is 0.1125 troy ounce, and of .986 pure gold; that is about a tenth of an ounce of pure gold, hence ten million ducats would be about a million ounces of gold, which in today's market is worth about US$660 million.