Fatimids and mercinaries

[The Wizard]

The Pope is the last one to maintain a Swiss Guard, but in the past, many more potentates had one. The only one I remember off the top of my head was the ancien regime's Swiss Guard, but I'm sure there were more.

EDIT: "Professional" armies right up to Carnot's levee en masse were largely national (meaning: recruited from the king's own country) in their upmake, as far as I know. I think the proportion of "nationals," for lack of a better term (i.e. people from the state or kingdom or empire that the army in question served) steadily increased from the time of the rise of the mercenary in the time of the Swiss and the Landsknechts, up until Carnot's reforms to bolster France's chances at war with all of Europe. At least, for France -- most French regiments spoke French and the like, and the truly foreign, mercenary regiments were small -- that is... for tiny states like the United Provinces, or true, multinational empires in the purest sense of the word, like the Habsburg Monarchy, the percentage of foreign-born soldiers in the military must've been substantially higher.