Karl Josef von Bachmann

Karl Josef Anton Leodegar von Bachmann (3 December 1734 – 3 September 1792) was a Swiss mercenary in French service, best known as the commander of the Swiss Guards during the Insurrection of 10 August 1792.

Family Bachmann was born on 3 December 1734 in Näfels, Switzerland, to Karl Leonhard von Bachmann and Elisabeth Keller. His father was a mercenary in French service who fought in the Spanish War of Succession and the Austrian War of Succession, rising to the rank of maréchal de camp. Having deployed his Swiss to defend the palace Bachmann escorted King Louis XVI and the Royal Family to the National Assembly, where they sought refuge. For reasons that are not clear, Bachmann did not give any instructions to his subordinates left behind in the Tuileries. About 650 Swiss Guards were subsequently killed, either during the fighting which broke out spontaneously shortly afterwards, or massacred after surrender.

Arrested by the revolutionaries, Bachmann was accused of treason for ordering the Swiss Guards to resist the storming of the royal palace and thereby offending the "Majesty of the People". Bachmann refused to acknowledge the tribunal which was trying him, as the Swiss soldiers in French service were entitled to be tried by their own courts. His trial was interrupted in the late afternoon of 2 September 1792 when the September Massacres of hundreds of political prisoners took place at the Conciergerie and Abbaye prisons. A mob invaded the courtroom where Bachmann and other Swiss Guards were being tried before the official Tribunal of 17 August. The crowd retreated when ordered to clear the room by the presiding judges and Bachmann "passed through their shambles unharmed on his way to the scaffold". Bachmann was then formally sentenced to death, and guillotined on 3 September 1792. He stepped onto the scaffold still wearing the red coat of the Swiss Guard.

The Dying Lion in Lucerne Bachmann's name is engraved on the Dying Lion monument in Lucerne, by Bertel Thorvaldsen, where he figures as second on the list of the fallen Swiss Guards.