The fame of the Swiss, in every war which desolated Europe from the fifteenth century down, rose to an extraordinary pitch; but this influence, which, as the hired soldiers of belligerent powers, they exercised in the affairs of Europe, was neither conducive to the weal of the state nor worthy of the Swiss people. Addison wrote in 1709 of them: “The inhabitants of the country are as great curiosities as the country itself; they generally hire themselves out in their youth, and if they are musket-proof till about fifty, they bring home the money they have got, and the limbs they have left, to pass the rest of their time among their native mountains.” He also relates that “one of the gentlemen of the place told me, by way of boast, that there were now seven wooden legs in his family; and that for these four generations there had not been one in his line that carried a whole body with him to the grave.” From their being so frequently in the personal service of foreign potentates, the name of Switzer with some writers became synonymous with guards or attendants on a king. The king in “Hamlet” says: “Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.” In 1594, Nashe, in his “Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem,” states that “Law, Logicke, and the Switzers may be hired to fight for anybody.” Even the French were so ungrateful as to chide the Swiss by saying, “We fight for honor, but you fight for money;” to which the Switzer rejoined, “It is only natural that each of us, like the rest of the world, should fight for what he has not got.” These Swiss soldiers were in great demand and liberally paid. They were not only hardy and patient of fatigue, but bold in action and obedient in discipline. The very sight of them alarmed the enemy, suggesting a passage in Tacitus of which every soldier will probably feel the truth, “The eye is the first to be vanquished in battle.”[67] Then these troops were as noted for their fidelity to the service they engaged in as for their courage; and in all their history there is scarce to be found any example of treachery.