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The Dying Lion of Luzern was carved out of natural rock wall by Danish sculpture Bertel Thorvalsen in 1821 in memory of 700 Swiss Guards who died during the French Revolution. They were killed by a mob of revolutionaries on Aug 10, 1792 while protecting the royal family at Tuileries Palace in Paris. They were not told that the King Louis XVI & family had already fled the palace. They stood their ground and were massacred by 30,000 Parisian mob intending to capture the king. The king was to die under the guillotine the following year. Since 1874 with the exception of protecting the Pope at the Vatican, the Swiss were forbidden to serve in any foreign armies.

Some say Thorvalsen wasn't fully paid for the project he was commissioned to do by the city council. He therefore finished off his work by carving an outline of a pig around the lion. The pig outline would be more observable if seen from a distance. Here I have the snout slightly cut off on the left side of the picture. When I took this picture I didn't know about what was supposed be a pig outline around the lion.
Mark Twain called the Lowendenkmal as "the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world".