January 22 1506 – The Swiss Guards Arrive at the Vatican

January 22 1506 – The Swiss Guards Arrive at the VaticanRate this post Known as some of the best soldiers in the world at the time, a group of 150 Swiss mercenaries passed through the Porta del Popolo of Vatican City on January 22, 1506 tasked with defending the pope. More than five centuries later, the highly-trained Pontifical Swiss Guards remain arguably the deadliest feature in the center of Roman Catholicism. By the end of the Middle Ages, the Swiss developed a reputation for creating fearsome fighting forces. The Swiss Federation, a group of nominally-connected city-states in the Holy Roman Empire, employed short-term militias built on mandatory service requirements for […]