Guards Rifles Battalion
Beginning in 1709 the Berlin-based Hohenzollern dynasty ruled the Principality of Neuchâtel in personal union with the Kingdom of Prussia.
[1] In the course of the Napoleonic Wars the principality provided for a rangers battalion as part of the Swiss Guards within Napoléon's Grande Armée since 1807.
[1] After the Liberation Wars the Conseil d’Etat (state council, i.e. government of Neuchâtel) addressed him in May 1814 requesting the permission to establish a special battalion, a Bataillon de Chasseurs, for the service of his majesty.
[1] Frederick William III then established by his most-supreme cabinet order (allerhöchste Cabinets-Ordre), issued in Paris on 19 May 1814, the Bataillon des Tirailleurs de la Garde following the same principals as with the Neuchâtel battalion within the Grande Armée.
[1] The guards rifles battalion was different from all other units serving the monarch since none of its soldiers were conscripts, but all volunteer Neuchâtelois, other Swiss, and Prussians.
The required volunteer Neuchâtelois were usually hard to win so that many men of doubtful reputation and adventurers enlisted too.
[4] While women of Berlin considered the French-speaking riflemen as charming celibates and good dancers with an attracting Franco-German jargon, their less reputated comrades were also suspected of theft and worse crimes.
[4] So the saying goes, that once at the royal table a guest reported that a corpse, dressed with nothing but a shirt, had been discovered in the Schlesischer Busch [de], a bush south of Köpenicker Straße in Berlin.
[3] After the Neuchâtel Crisis the Hohenzollern accepted their dethronement there in 1857 and left it up to the Swiss riflemen to quit the service.
[3] However, many stayed, and one of the last Swiss serving was Captain Bernard de Gélieu (Neuchâtel, *28 September 1828 – 20 April 1907, Potsdam, as General of the Infantry).
In 1912, on the occasion of his state visit to Switzerland, German Emperor William II wore his uniform as the Prussian Royal Colonel of the guards rifles, which was received with lack of understanding by many Swiss.
After the November Revolution some demobilised riflemen joined the guards cavalry rifles division (Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division), among them Robert Kempner.
[9] In January 1919 the Freikorps Garde-Schützen was founded, which existed until early 1920 and operated in the Baltic states as well as in West Prussia.
While Karl August Varnhagen von Ense reported about fraternisations between riflemen and revolutionaries in his Journal der Märzrevolution, there is no other evidence for this.
[3] The 4th Company of the Guards Rifles, under Captain de Gélieu, conquered Austrian batteries near Lipa between Sadová and Königgrätz, as displayed by Christian Sell in a battle painting.
During the Franco-Prussian War from 1870 to 1871 the battalion distinguished themselves in the Battles of Gravelotte,[3] Sedan, Le Bourget and during the Siege of Paris.
The Guards reserve rifles battalion was first operating near Namur, but soon redeployed to East Prussia after the Russian invasion there (Battle of Tannenberg) and subsequently stationed in Upper Silesia.
As of July 1917 the reserve rifles operated in Galicia, only to advance the Italian front near Udine in October of that year.
The battalion was deployed for the first time north of Dixmuiden at the beginning of the Battle on the Yser and suffered very high casualties.
Following a design of Construction Councillor Ferdinand Schönhals the government-employed architect Ernst August Roßteuscher laid out a comfortable new barracks compound in Lichterfelde West between 1881 and 1884.
The Prussian Schutzpolizei, newly formed after 1918, nicknamed the green police, received shakos like those of the guards rifles.
