18 November: William Tell

According to legend, William Tell was forced to shoot an apple placed on his son's head, on 18 November 1307. Here are 10 facts about William Tell.

Albrecht Gessler and William Tell

1. What's the story? In 1307 Altdorf, in the canton of Uri, Switzerland, was ruled over by a tyrant called Albrecht Gessler. He demanded that the people in the town must bow down to his hat, which he'd placed on a pole. William Tell, visiting town with his son, refused to bow down to the hat and was arrested. Both Tell and his son were going to be executed but Gessler, having heard of Tell's prowess with a crossbow, decided to put him to the test. He told Tell that if he could shoot an Apple from his son's head, he'd let them both go. Tell rose to the challenge, and succeeded in hitting the apple with one shot, thus sparing both their lives.
2. Gessler noticed, however, that Tell had removed two bolts from his quiver and wanted to know why. Tell replied that had he missed and killed his son, he'd intended to kill Gessler with the second shot. Gessler was furious. He couldn't go back on his word that he'd spare Tell's life, so he had Tell arrested again to be sent to prison for life.
3. Tell was shackled and bundled into Gessler's boat to be taken across Lake Lucerne to the dungeon in the castle at Küssnacht. While they were on route, there was a storm. The boat was in danger of sinking and the crew begged Gessler to untie Tell so he could steer the boat to safety. Gessler agreed, but Tell steered the boat to some rocks and jumped out. The place where he jumped out is called "Tellsplatte" ("Tell's slab"). There has been a memorial chapel there since the 16th century.
4. Tell ran for it, across country. Gessler chased him but when they got to a place called the Hohle Gasse, Tell used that second crossbow bolt, and killed him. This sparked a rebellion which led to the formation of the Old Swiss Confederacy.
5. William Tell's son was called Walter.
6. What we know about the legend mostly comes from an account of it written by Aegidius Tschudi in about 1570, which is a fleshed out version of earlier records in which the hero wasn't even named. It was Tschudi who said that the apple shooting incident happened on 18 November 1307.
7. Tschudi also wrote about the rest of William Tell's life, saying that he fought against Austria in the 1315 Battle of Morgarten, and that he died in 1354, killed while trying to rescue a child from drowning in the Schächental River.
8. Historians have found no evidence that a person called William Tell ever existed, but they can't prove he didn't, either. They do note that the story about the apple is very similar to other legends about outlaws who save people from tyrants by shooting an apple off their son's head. The story of Egil in the Thidreks saga is one such. There's even an English hero called Adam Bell who did the same thing, and a Danish one called Palnatoki. By the 18^th century another legend had grown up around William Tell and two other people by the same name, collectively known as the Three Tells. They were said to be asleep in a cave at the Rigi and would wake up and come to help in times of need, similar to the British legend of King Arthur.
9. Antoine-Marin Lemierre wrote a play inspired by Tell in 1766. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe considered writing another one about ten years later, but ended up suggesting that his friend Friedrich von Schiller wrote it instead, which he did in 1804. This play inspired Gioachino Rossini to write his opera William Tell in 1829, the one with the famous overture. The William Tell Overture was adopted as the theme for The Lone Ranger. The story of William Tell has also inspired films (including Charlie Chaplin portraying William Tell in the 1928 silent film The Circus) and a pack of Playing cards. The French navy named one of their battleships after him. The ship was captured by the British in 1800.
10. John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, was inspired by Tell, and compared himself to the hero in his diary. Adolph Hitler, too, was a fan of the play at first, and quoted it in Mein Kampf. However, he went off it when a Swiss man called Maurice Bavaud tried to assassinate Hitler and was dubbed "a new William Tell". Hitler then had the play banned.

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