Swiss Guards, a celebrated corps or regiment of Swiss mercenaries in the French army of the old régime, constituted 'Gardes' by royal decree in 1616. Mercenaries as they were, they were ever unswerving in their fidelity to the Bourbon kings, and their courage never blazed more brightly than on the steps of the Tuileries, 10th August 1792. They had been ordered to leave Paris by a decree of the Assembly on July 17th, but had not yet been sent farther than their barracks, when on August 8th, in anticipation of insurrection, they were ordered to march to the Tuileries. Michelet gives their number as 1330; Challamel, Pollio, and Marcel in Le Bataillon du Dix Août (1881) as 1200; Louis Blanc as 950; Mortimer-Ternaux as 900 to 950. But the number may now be taken definitely as nearly 800, including the ordinary guard of the king (see Captain de Durler's MS. Relation printed by Mr H. Morse Stephens in Eng. Hist. Review for April 1887). In anticipation of a storm Mandat had made admirable arrangements to defend the palace, but the National Guards fraternised with the insurgents, and Mandat himself was murdered on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville, whither he had gone by the king's command on a summons from the municipality. Meanwhile a growing mob under Santerre, with the famous 500 men of Marseilles at their head, marched on the Tuileries. But before they reached the palace Roederer had persuaded the king to leave the Tuileries and place himself and the royal family under the protection of the National Assembly. He was accompanied thither by 150 Swiss, besides two hundred gentlemen and about a hundred National Guards. The remainder were left without orders, uncertain what to do, and when Westermann with his Marseillais and a raging mob made their way through the gate of the Tuileries and across the court the 650 Swiss under Captain Durler faced them on the great staircase, knowing only the orders of the night before that they were not to suffer themselves to be forced. Westermann, an Alsatian, tried to win them over by speaking to them in German, but it was not so that these men had learned duty. Some one fired a shot, and the struggle began. The Swiss had already driven back Westermann with about a hundred dead, when the king hearing the firing sent them orders to leave the palace. They fought their retreat across the gardens, while the mob swarmed into the palace and murdered a few wounded men they found there. Those under Durler made their way to the Assembly, were disarmed and placed in the neighbouring church of the Feuillants; but those who were posted in the corridors and rooms of the palace did not hear the order to retreat, and were speedily attacked, overpowered by the mob, and hunted to death. A few fought their way out across the gardens only to find the drawbridge up, whereupon they made for the Place Louis XV., formed a square under the statue of the king, and were cut to pieces where they stood. Few but those who found refuge in the church of the Feuillants survived that fatal day. Fifty-four were sent to the Abbaye and were among the first to perish in the atrocious September massacres. The heroism of the Swiss Guards was fittingly com- memorated in 1821 by the great lion outside one of the gates of Lucerne, cut out of the rock after a model by Thorwaldsen.
See Pfyffer d'Altishofen's Récit de la Conduite des Gardes Suisses (Lucerne, 1824); Durler's Relation already quoted; vol. ii. (1891) of H. Morse Stephens' History of the French Revolution; also the article MERCENARIES.