Dear Julie, in the meantime I have followed this subject up - and have to report some additional data, and a correction. Amongst other things I have contacted the "Swiss Guard" http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/swiss_guard/ directly, and received a nice response from Major Hasler - I summarize : the Guard was founded in 1506 (under Pope Julius II), and has always been named "Cohors Helvetica", which implies a smaller group than "Legio" - consequently the original requestor will better look for another "Legio" :-(. Due to all sorts of events, full lists of all members are available from 1824 onwards only, with some lists dating back to 1772 - so if one is looking for a member in 1748, there wouldn't be any data available. In case someone else wants to have these lists checked : you should have good reasons to ask for information (which I would interpret as either close relationship, or serious historical research) when writing to the Swiss Guard (address on the above web page); you should include surname, first name, place of citizenship and preferrably date of birth. In other words, they don't have time to search whether a so far unknown ancestor of yours is on their lists - you already have to have details to get further information on his carreer with the Swiss Guard. Further lists might be available at : - Archivio di Stato di Roma, Corso del Rinascimento 40, 00186 Roma, Italy, or - Staatsarchiv Luzern (http://www.staluzern.ch/) Now - where else should one look for Legio Helvetica ? As has been mentioned by others - thousands of Swiss had been serving in foreign armies (officially until 1848 - inofficially, but to a much smaller extent, also afterwards). The ones mentioned in "Historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Schweiz" were founded after 1798, however - no use in this case (1748). I hope this clarifies the situation a bit, and wish good luck with the further research : would be interested to hear about any positive finding ;-) ! Best regards - Wolf ---------------------- Wolf W. Seelentag, PhD, e-mail : wolf@swissmail.com Reherstr. 19, CH - 9016 St. Gallen, Switzerland Tel (home) : +41-71-2885121 Fax : +49-89-2443-91987 Tel (work) : +41-71-4942233 > ---------- > Von: Seelentag Wolfhart Dr. KSSG_RO > Gesendet: Dienstag, 25. Januar 2000 10:20 > An: SWITZERLAND-L@rootsweb.com; 'Julie Sass' > Betreff: AW: [SWITZ] Legio Helvetica > > The translation into German would be "Schweizer Garde" - which is the > German name of the Pope's "bodyguards" in the Vatican : mainly > representative nowadays, but well known soldiers in earlier centuries. > Check > http://www.datacomm.ch/awicky/gsp/index.html > (sorry - in German only). I would consider this the most likely > explanation, though I cannot exclude for sure that some other Swiss > regiment (and there were lots of them) could also be meant. > > ---------- > Von: Julie Sass[SMTP:sassy1@mindspring.com] > Gesendet: Montag, 24. Januar 2000 13:11 > An: SWITZERLAND-L@rootsweb.com > Betreff: [SWITZ] Legio Helvetica > .......... > << 1748, across a "former soldier" of the "Legio Helvetica". > Has anybody any idea what kind of soldiery this "Legio" was? >> ..........