Swiss mercenaries

Okay, imagine you're a little kid and you want to play with toys with your friend who lives across the street. But you don't have enough toys to play with, so your friend tells you that he has a bunch of toys that he'll let you play with if you help him clean up his room. In exchange for your help, he'll let you play with all the toys you want.

Swiss mercenaries were kind of like that. A long time ago, different countries needed soldiers to fight in wars. But sometimes they didn't have enough soldiers of their own, so they would hire other soldiers from different countries to fight for them. And one of the countries that was really good at fighting was Switzerland.

So Switzerland became known as a place where people could come to hire soldiers to fight for them. And people from Switzerland would sign up to be mercenaries and go fight in other countries' wars.

It was kind of like the Swiss were sharing their toys of soldiers with other countries - but in exchange, they were getting paid for it. And because Swiss soldiers were really good at fighting, they became really popular and a lot of countries wanted to hire them.

But being a mercenary could be dangerous because you were fighting in wars that weren't your own country's. And sometimes the soldiers didn't come back home because they died. So while it was good that Switzerland was making money, it wasn't always good for the soldiers who went to fight in other countries' wars.

So that's what Swiss mercenaries were - soldiers from Switzerland who went to fight in other countries' wars for money.