Cerino-Badone, Swiss Regiments - Libreria Militare Ares

same regiment grouped under the same command, to avoid Colonels with the same powers of
command of higher officers, like Brigadier Generals.
The Gentil Galant goes to war: the Swiss officer between business and warfare
Officers of the Regiment Diesbach, about 1750. From left to right; a captain of lieutenant, a grenadier captain or
lieutenant, an ensign. The grenadiers officers were equipped with a musket, like the ordinary grenadiers, to
improve the company’s firepower. (Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection)
The Swiss officer was a strange mixture between a warlord and businessman, between the sense
of duty of obedience to the sovereign under whose flags he fought and his personal interests. The
social origin was not obvious. Eleven of the regimental commanders who served in the War of
Austrian Succession, seven belonged to the nobility and of these only four had already been a social
position of prestige within the various cantonal councils. Not all of them descended from families of
soldiers, and only 4 colonels boasted a relative who already served in any regiment in foreign pay.
They were mostly veterans of the War of Polish Succession (1733-1738), but there were also those
who, like Johann Rietman, had fought in the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713). Characters
like Alexandre de Guibert Syssac and Augustin Gabriel Roguin had for a military career a real
passion to the point that they were able to make important innovations in the army of Savoy,
especially working to improve the tactical Reglement d’Exercice et de Manouvres. Only Béat
Gaspard Uttiger seemed to be the “Homo Novus” between the regimental commanders. Trained as
a magistrate in the canton of Zug, political troubles led him to choose a military career when,
already 36-year old, many of his colleagues in uniform have boasted for many years a military
experience of all respect. For the recruitment of junior officers, and later of soldiers, the Colonels
relied on a network of patronage formed by relatives, friends or members of their cantons. Jean
Reydt had begun his career in the regiment of his father, while Louis-Albert Roguin, when he rose
the 13 November 1733 a new regiment for the king of Sardinia, offered the gallons of lieutenant
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