swiss mercenaries in the tyw

[footslogger]

I'm reading Peter Wilson's history and he mentions a couple of times early on that there were bodies of Swiss mercenaries. Does anyone know what these looked like at the time? Similar to everyone else or did they have a distinct look? And what about flags?

[DanielS]

The Swiss would basicly look the same as everyone else, perhaps a little fashionable if they hadn't been issued clothes or been paid enough to get dressed up properly. Flags would be those provided by the army that hired them.

[footslogger]

The Swiss would basicly look the same as everyone else, perhaps a little fashionable if they hadn't been issued clothes or been paid enough to get dressed up properly. Flags would be those provided by the army that hired them.

Thanks for the response. I'm curious about the flags observation though. I was under the impression that flags in the tyw were pretty much individual based on the regiment. This sounds more like a standard issue or something?

If they were serving the Bohemian rebels for example, what might the flags they were given look like.

[DanielS]

The common thing was for each regiment to have basic pattern which was repeated on all the flags, this could somethign very simple like all flags having the same basic colour such as red. Each company would in turn have it's own indivudal design. A good example of this system is Baner's regiment http://kriegsbuch.blogspot.com/2010/10/ ... -1632.html

In addition to this flags would often carry some sort of symbol which denoted the army it belonged to, the Spanish used the cross of Burgundy as did some Imperial regiments who of course made much use of the imperial Eagle, the Swedes marked their flags with a "GARS" (Gustavus Adolphus Rex Sueciae) in Gustavus time and so on. When regiments went from one army to another they changed flags as well, the ex-Danish regiments which entered Swedish service went through an elaborate cermony in which they gave up their old "Danish" standard & flags and in turn recieved new "Swedish" ones.

Unfortunately we know next to nothing about the Bohemian flags as no one seems to have bothered to make much in the way of detailed records of the Bohemian flags which were captured the Imperial & Leugist forces.

[footslogger]

The common thing was for each regiment to have basic pattern which was repeated on all the flags, this could somethign very simple like all flags having the same basic colour such as red. Each company would in turn have it's own indivudal design. A good example of this system is Baner's regiment http://kriegsbuch.blogspot.com/2010/10/ ... -1632.html

In addition to this flags would often carry some sort of symbol which denoted the army it belonged to, the Spanish used the cross of Burgundy as did some Imperial regiments who of course made much use of the imperial Eagle, the Swedes marked their flags with a "GARS" (Gustavus Adolphus Rex Sueciae) in Gustavus time and so on. When regiments went from one army to another they changed flags as well, the ex-Danish regiments which entered Swedish service went through an elaborate cermony in which they gave up their old "Danish" standard & flags and in turn recieved new "Swedish" ones.

Unfortunately we know next to nothing about the Bohemian flags as no one seems to have bothered to make much in the way of detailed records of the Bohemian flags which were captured the Imperial & Leugist forces.

Thanks very much for the additional info.