Municipality and at the "Cavalry Barracks 1" in central Stockholm. History Svea Life Guards dates back to the year 1521, when the men of Dalarna chose 16 young able men as body guards for Gustav Vasa, thus making the Life Guards one of the world's oldest regiments still on active duty. The King's Battalion's Life Company is the world's oldest company. Since the year 1523 the section, now enlarged, has been known as the Royal Corps of Halberdiers and, under various names, the regiment has had its natural home at the Palace in Stockholm. The Halberdiers were transformed in 1619 into the Household Company which accompanied Gustavus Adolphus wherever he went in Europe. It was from this time too that the unit was classed as a regiment. In 1633 the company brought the king's body home from Lützen and thereafter formed the basis of Queen Christina's new guards regiment within the royal household. The three following Carolean kings – Charles X, Charles XI, and Charles XII – required a government organization that was more mobile and the guards officers and soldiers accompanied them to the various battlefields under the name of His Royal Majesty's Guards. With the destruction of the palace in Stockholm by fire in 1697 the guards' natural responsibility for the defense of the capital disappeared. The new palace was completed in the 1750s and there was again a need for Life Guards and Household Troops for defending the capital. During the period 1756–1810 – when there were constant palace coups and a large number of assassination conspiracies – the guards officers and the palace guard often played a decisive role. Gustav III tried to exploit this by appointing himself head of the regiment in 1774. The colonel was then given the title of second-in-command or deputy commander and this command hierarchy continued until 1980 when a number of constitutional changes brought it to an end. The Life Guards reckon 19 August 1772, as the proudest day in this period for it was then that Gustav III was able to break with corrupt governments. The most ignominious day is 20 June 1810 when the Marshal of the Realm, Axel von Fersen, was lynched during the funeral of the crown prince without the regiment intervening in spite of its being on duty. The name was changed to the Svea Life Guards in 1792 and in 1802 the regiment moved