Gemini 3: The Garden of the Tuileries

Lion Monument, Lucerne, Switzerland

Near the village
The peaceful village
The lion sleeps tonight
Near the village
The quiet village
The lion sleeps tonight

"For more than 500 years, young Swiss men went out into the world in a controlled military environment at an age when they are quite naturally a little wild," said Anselm Zurfluh, director of Geneva's Museum of Swiss in the World. "They usually returned calmed down and wanting to work, settle down and have families. I firmly believe this is one reason Switzerland is so peaceful." 


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. One group of sixty Swiss were taken as prisoners to the Paris City Hall before being killed by the crowd there.

 An estimated hundred and sixty more died in prison of their wounds, or were killed during the September Massacres that followed. Apart from fewer than a hundred Swiss who escaped from the Tuileries, some hidden by sympathetic Parisians, the only survivors of the regiment were a three-hundred-strong detachment which had been sent to Normandy to escort grain convoys a few days before August 10th. 

The Swiss officers were mostly amongst those massacred, although Major Karl Josef von Bachmann  in command at the Tuileries was formally tried and guillotined in September, still wearing his red uniform coat.

Two Swiss officers, the captains Henri de Salis and Joseph Zimmermann, did however survive and went on to reach senior rank under Napoleon and the Restoration.

Linda Koelbel's persian cat, Rascal, sleeping

The Swiss guards so beloved by tourists at the gates of Vatican City are the most colourful remnant of a mercenary tradition that goes back 700 years. But the tradition may be seeing a controversial 21st-century revival in the form of private security guards in conflict zones. [read more]

"Ja. Three cheeseburgers"

Hush, my darling
Don't fear my darling
The lion sleeps tonight
Hush, my darling
Don't fear my darling
The lion sleeps tonight