You wouldn’t think “sugar-baker” (pastry-chef) gave much scope for adventure, but Switzerland had a great reputation for skilled sugar-bakers so a a lot of medieval and Renaissance sugar-bakers were Swiss.
They were freelance, travelling from place to place and being hired to make Impressive Stuff for a banquet here or a feast there, in that Duke’s castle or that Prince’s mansion.
They were also spies. There’s a famously wrong line in the movie “The Third Man”:
“You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
Not only did Switzerland not produce the cuckoo clock (which came from the Black Forest in Germany) but its principal export during the middle ages and Renaissance was mercenary soldiers, the most feared in Europe. They were called “the Dirty Swiss” because at a time when a standard tactic was to outbid and buy the contract of an opponent’s mercenaries, a contingent of Swiss mercs stayed bought until their job was done.
As for that job, a paraphrase of Kyle Reese’s speech from “The Terminator” could go something like this:.
“Listen, and understand. Those Swiss are out there. They have a contract. They’ll keep to that contract, so they can’t be bargained with and they can’t be reasoned with. They don’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And so they don’t have to fight you again next week, next month, next year, they’ll take no prisoners, and they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you break and run or are all dead.”
So where did the sugar-bakers come into this? They moved around the members of society who might want to hire mercenaries, so they were in a position to see rivalries and enmities develop and send back the information that, say, Baron A was about to take a slap at Count B over a land dispute, and would welcome two companies of pikemen and one of arquebusiers at a reasonable rate for two months.
They were also able to report back that Marquess C, currently hiring a company of halberdiers, was throwing lavish parties to impress the king but was behind on his fees and unlikely to get caught up, so the expiry-through-non-payment clause of the halberdiers’ contract would come into effect on the first day of June. Also that Sieur D, the Marquess’s rival, would be more than happy to sign them up and might pay a large bonus if that signing-up happened while the mercs were still under Marquess C’s roof…
None of these noble gentry would be happy to know that the man making éclairs in their kitchen was reporting back their financial and political secrets to a foreign power, but would be happy to learn what else their sugar-baker knew and about whom they knew it. And when they asked, it wouldn’t start with “Please…”
The only reason why the Swiss didn’t conquer large areas of Europe was a lack of unity and trust. Outside Switzerland they were Swiss, but inside Switzerland their loyalty was to their cantons - Zürich, Appenzell, Uri, Bern, Basel etc. – and no fox leaves other foxes to mind their henhouse while they’re away from home.
Are these a few story seeds, perhaps? If so, you’re welcome…
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