Swiss Mercenaries: The Bloody Business That Shaped Europe

Before neutrality and banking, Switzerland's most famous export was violence. For centuries, Swiss pikemen were the most feared soldiers in Europe, hiring themselves out to French kings, popes, and Habsburg emperors. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the Reisläufer system—how impoverished Alpine villages turned young men into professional killers, why Swiss pike squares dominated battlefields from Italy to Germany, and how this brutal trade eventually sparked a moral crisis that led to the ban on foreign service. Lucas recounts the 1527 Sack of Rome, where Swiss Guards died defending Pope Clement VII, and the 1792 Storming of the Tuileries, where the last Swiss Regiment was massacred. He explains how the Swiss Diet tried to regulate mercenary contracts, how individual cantons like Fribourg and Zurich profited, and how reformers like Niklaus von der Flüe warned against the moral decay of selling soldiers. The episode ends with the modern legacy: today's Swiss Guard in Vatican City, and the lingering tension between Swiss neutrality and its warrior past. #SwissMercenaries #Reisläufer #SwissHistory #EarlyModernWarfare #SackOfRome #SwissGuard #PikeSquare #Fribourg #Zurich #NiklausVonDerFlüe #Mercenary #SwissNeutrality #Vatican #RenaissanceWarfare #Habsburg #Valois #History #FexingoHistory Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo