The Vatican has a Swiss Guard to this day...
but the French Royal Family also had a Swiss Guard
The most famous episode in the history of the Swiss Guards was their defence of the Tuileries Palace in central Paris during the French Revolution.
Of the nine hundred Swiss Guards defending the Palace on August 10, 1792, about six hundred were killed during the fighting or massacred after surrender.
An estimated hundred and sixty more died in prison of their wounds or were killed during the September Massacres that followed.
Fewer than a hundred Swiss who escaped from the Tuileries, some hidden by sympathetic Parisians.
The heroic but futile stand of the Swiss is commemorated by Bertel Thorvaldsen's Lion Monument in Lucerne, dedicated in 1821, which shows a dying lion collapsed upon broken symbols of the French monarchy.
An inscription on the monument lists the twenty-six Swiss officers who died on 10 August and 2–3 September 1792, and records that approximately 760 Swiss Guardsmen were killed on those days.