[3] Those selected for service at Louisbourg were chosen with particular regard to their physical strength and their technical skill in the building trades, and were enlisted for six-year-periods.

Enlistment records show that the soldiers of the regiment came not only from Switzerland, but also from Germany, Denmark, Lorraine and Montbéliard.

The colonel-proprietor had entered a capitulation with the King, through the secretary of state for the navy, in which he put the regiment, its officers and men, into French service.

The capitulation was a legal contract, renewable every ten years, where the terms of both parties were carefully stipulated.

The regiment had its own legal jurisdiction, and its members could only be tried by its own court-martial, even when being accused of crimes against civilians.

[10] The mutiny of 1744 was an expression of the foreign soldiers will to defend their special status from infringements.

The drummers wore the colonel-proprietors' livery, not the king's, and the drums were decorated with the colonel's coat of arms.