page_title: Guards Rifles Battalion
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Guards Rifles Battalion / History
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Werbung von Freiwilligen für das preußische Garde-Schützen-Bataillon in Neuchâtel
context_page_description: The Guards Rifles Battalion was an infantry unit of the Prussian Army. Together with the Guards Ranger Battalion it formed the light infantry within the 3rd Guards Infantry Brigade in the 2nd Guards Division of the Guards Corps. The battalion consisted of four companies.
context_section_description: Since 1709 the Berlin-based Hohenzollern ruled the Principality of Neuchâtel in personal union with the Kingdom of Prussia. They were deposed by Napoléon Bonaparte, and in 1806 he made the French Marshall Louis-Alexandre Berthier prince of Neuchâtel. 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. The rangers were nicknamed Canaris (i.e. canaries) because of their yellow uniforms. After in 1814 Neuchâtel was restituted to the Hohenzollern, Frederick William III of Prussia reassumed office as prince of Neuchâtel. 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.
  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. To this end 400 men of 1.68 metres (5.5 ft) minimum height were to be recruited. A number of demobilised Canaries and newly enlisted men were thus recruited. Major Baron Charles-Gustave de Meuron (1779–1830) became their first commander.
   On 5 January 1815 the battalion arrived in Berlin, having marched the way from Paris. 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 guards rifles, rather lacking men, were one of the units accepting one-year volunteers (Einjährig-Freiwillige).
  The battalion was to consist by two thirds of native Neuchâtelois and by one third of nationals of other Swiss cantons. However, this composition was indeed never realised. The required volunteer Neuchâtelois were usually hard to win so that many men of doubtful reputation and adventurers enlisted too. So French, originally the vernacular and the command language, was soon replaced. Since 1816 all oral and written orders had to be in German only. However, unlike other Prussian military units the guards rifles did not address their commander by his eventual military rank, but as "Herr Kommandant" (M. le commandant), which in the French Army is the rank equivalent to a Major, by this time the usual rank of a battalion commander.
  The composition of the battalion and the behaviour of many a rifleman earned it an ambiguous reputation. 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. 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, a bush south of Köpenicker Straße in Berlin. The king then carefully asked the also present commander of the guards rifles: "It was not one of your men, commander, was it?" And the commander, possibly Major von Tilly, replied that this was not likely, since a guards rifleman would have taken the shirt too.
  When in 1848 Neuchâtel proclaimed to be a republic, thus abolishing monarchy, the recruitment in Switzerland ended. After the Neuchâtel Crisis the Hohenzollern accepted their dethronement there in 1857 and left it up to the Swiss riflemen to quit the service. 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). He was a royalist Neuchâtelois, later distinguishing himself in the Neuchâtel Crisis, but earlier proposed by the Conseil d'Etat of Neuchâtel in 1847, which had the right of nomination for the battalion's officers, only the commander to be chosen by the monarch.
  Since 1841 the guards rifles were allowed to also recruit three-year volunteers (Dreijährig-Freiwillige), ordinary
caption: Noncommissioned officers in Neuchâtel recruiting riflemen.
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