History CadreOfForeignBodyguards / RealLife

* In the period leading up to the UsefulNotes/SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan, Afghan communist leader Hafizullah Amin requested a cadre of Soviet troops to help protect himself and other Afghan leaders since the many rebellions among native Afghans (including a big one at Herat where troops drawn largely from minority Hazara people who were not considered as dangerous as the majority Pashtuns) led them to not trust other Afghans to keep them safe. A spetsnaz unit was specially formed for this purpose, drawn largely from Muslim citizens of Soviet Union (thus the nickname for the unit, "the Muslim Battalion."), and duly dispatched to Kabul. This led to a spectacular episode of BodyguardBetrayal as the many domestic uprisings and suspicious diplomatic activities by Amin led the Soviet leadership to believe that Amin is incompetent, duplicitous, or both, and KGB decided to forcibly remove him and replace him with someone else. After more conventional attempts to assassinate him via snipers and poison failed, they opted for a brute force approach and several hundred special forces troops conveniently located in Kabul provided the necessary manpower for "Operation Storm-333," in which Soviet troops assaulted the presidential palace directly and killed Amin themselves. Interestingly, Amin's Afghan bodyguards put up a surprisingly tough fight and inflicted a large number of casualties among the Soviets, in a foretaste of what was to come later.

* [[https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/two-gun-cohen-the-chinese-general-who-swung-the-un-vote-665125 Two-Gun Cohen]], the Polish-born British, Canadian, and Jewish bodyguard to Dr. Sun Yat Sen.

* [[SubvertedTrope In a subversion of the expectation that foreign troops would be above palace intrigue,]] in 1373 the ruling regent of Cyprus, John of Antioch, was convinced by his sister-in-law, Eleanor, that his Bulgarian bodyguards were going to betray him, and had them all thrown off the highest tower of St Hilarion Castle. Eleanor had him killed a very short time later.

* The Gardes-Suisses (Swiss Guards) of the French kings, including the more ceremonial body-guards, the Cents-Suisses (Hundred Swiss). During the UsefulNotes/FrenchRevolution they, unlike the Gardes-Francaises (French Guards), who sympathized with the Revolution, remained true to Louis XVI and were killed during the storming of the Tuileries in 1792.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_German_Bodyguard The Imperial German Bodyguard]], a cadre of Germans (from outside the borders of the UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire) whose job it was to guard the Julio-Claudian emperors. The most important thing they defended them from was the PraetorianGuard[[note]]who would later get a reputation for [[BodyguardBetrayal executing emperors]] who they judged incompetent[[/note]]. Yes, the early emperors of Rome had a group of bodyguards [[WhoWatchesTheWatchmen whose job it was to protect them from their own bodyguards]].

* The Middle Eastern TropeCodifier may be the Circassian Guard which protects the King of Jordan. They are drawn from the Circassian people, which originate from north of the Black Sea before being scattered from their homeland. They continue to wear colder-climate uniforms, including wool hats, leather boots, and capes while guarding the kings of the desert country.

* OlderThanFeudalism: King David's Kerethites and Pelethites (Cretans and Philistines) in 2 Samuel 15 in Literature/TheBible

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_German_Bodyguard The Imperial German Bodyguard]], a cadre of Germans (from outside the borders of the UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire) whose job it was to guard the Julio-Claudian emperors. The most important thing they defended them from was the PraetorianGuard[[note]]who would later get a reputation for [[BodyguardBetrayal executing emperors]] who they judged incompetent[[/note]]. Yes, the early emperors of Rome had a group of bodyguards, [[WhoWatchesTheWatchmen whose job it was to protect them from their own bodyguards]].
** Particularly during the rather piecemeal conquest of Britain, which at times became one-tribe-at-a-time, the Romans would "gift" a cohort of legionaries to a tribal ruler who agreed to submit to Rome to serve as their bodyguards. Of course, guarding the new puppet ruler was a secondary priority. Their ''actual'' role was to keep an eye on the new subjects of the Empire and crush any resistance before it truly had a chance to begin.

* The Western TropeCodifier today is likely the Swiss Guards that protect UsefulNotes/ThePope in UsefulNotes/VaticanCity, UsefulNotes/{{Rome}}. The silly pants may make them seem a little like {{Bunny Ears Lawyer}}s, but they were a terror on the battlefield in the late 1400s to early 1500s, and they retain their tradition faithfully. And while they ''look'' silly, anyone trying to do harm to His Holiness will come to realize, to their detriment, that they are ''highly'' trained military professionals--they have all completed basic training with the [[UsefulNotes/SwissWithArmyKnives Swiss Army]], are chosen according to exacting standards of physical fitness, and are given further training once they arrive in the Guards. And although they are most often seen with their ceremonial weapons (swords and halberds) for guard duty and for the tourists, this is in reality their version of the 18th-century uniforms worn by the BritishRoyalGuards; when actually guarding the Pope, they carry the standard-issue weapons of the Swiss Army: the SIG Sauer P220 handgun, the SIG SG 550 assault rifle, and the [=MP5=] submachine gun … and they wear more practical, monochrome uniforms while at it.

** The French monarchy also had the Garde Écossaise (Scots Guards), originally a company of knights and mounted archers part of a Scottish expeditionary force during UsefulNotes/TheHundredYearsWar that king Charles VII kept with him. With time they formally became his bodyguards, and, as their ranks were enlarged and filled with Frenchmen, became the first company of the Garde du Corps du Roi (Bodyguards of the King), the main cavalry regiment of the royal guard.

* OlderThanFeudalism: King David's Kerethites and Pelethites (Cretans and Philistines) in 2 Samuel 15 in Literature/TheBible
* The Middle Eastern TropeCodifier may be the Circassian Guard which protects the King of Jordan. They are drawn from the Circassian people, which originate from north of the Black Sea before being scattered from their homeland. They continue to wear colder-climate uniforms, including wool hats, leather boots, and capes while guarding the kings of the desert country.

* The Ottoman Empire's Janissaries, who were Christian children enslaved at a young age from subject territories (mostly those in eastern Europe) and trained into elite military units. The system was engineered to create and ensure loyalty to the Ottoman Sultan alone and prevent the rise of a native military and bureaucratic aristocracy that could rival him. The several Janissary revolts happened once this way of recruiting loosened (as early as the end of the 16th century; it totally ended in the 18th).
** The Ottomans likely got this idea from the Ghilmans, slave-soldiers of Turkic origin used in Muslim Persia after the rise of the Abbasid dynasty, and the also-foreign-slave-soldier Mamluks of Egypt. Similarly to the Janissaries, these ended up laxing their standards and getting locals involved, got too much temporal power and rebelled against their rulers (or, in the case of the Mamluks, ''became'' the rulers).
* King of Poland John Sobieski used former Janissaries taken as [=POWs=] as part of his ''[[BadassArmy Autorament]]''.
* The Walloon Guards, which protected the Spanish monarchs from 1734 to 1820. They were drawn from the Walloon people of Belgium.
* [[SubvertedTrope In a subversion of the expectation that foreign troops would be above palace intrigue,]] in 1373 the ruling regent of Cyprus, John of Antioch, was convinced by his sister-in-law, Eleanor, that his Bulgarian bodyguards were going to betray him, and had them all thrown off the highest tower of St Hilarion Castle. Eleanor had him killed a very short time later.

* During the UsefulNotes/SpanishCivilWar, the Nationalists' ''regulares'', colonial troops drawn from the native populations of Spain's North African colonies, so distinguished themselves in battle that after the war Franco formed a personal guard known as the ''Guardia Mora'' (Moorish Guard), who dressed in exotic native uniforms and rode white Arabian horses.
* Gallowglasses (Irish *gall óglach*, literally "young foreign soldier") were originally Norse/Scots warriors brought to Ireland as mercenary regiments and bodyguards for Gaelic Kings and lords. As they settled in the country for generations and became an indispensable fixture of warfare, they became more of an elite class of heavy infantry, with many recruits being native-born.