William Tell
Tell, William, the national hero of Switzerland. He is the central figure of a 14th-century legend about the Swiss struggle for liberation from the rule of Albert II of Austria. Tradition makes Tell a skillful archer and peasant leader in the canton of UriGessler, the imperial governor, set his cap upon a pole in the marketplace of Altdorf and decreed that each villager should bare his head in homage as he passed by. Tell refused, and Gessler forced him to shoot an apple from the head of his small son. The boy stood unflinching as the arrow flew true.
Gessler then noticed that Tell had another arrow ready, and asked why. “To kill you if my son had been harmed,” Tell answered. Gessler ordered that Tell be arrested and taken by boat to a prison across Lake Lucerne. A storm arose, and Tell, a skilled boatman, was freed from his bonds to guide the boat. He steered it near a rocky shore and escaped. He later ambushed and killed Gessler in the Hohle Gasse (Hollow Lane) near Küssnacht. A chapel named for Tell to commemorate the event was built on the site in 1522. It was restored in 1895.
Tell became a leader of the forest cantons in the Everlasting League, formed to combat the Austrians.
The earliest known mention of William Tell is in a ballad of about 1470. A fuller account is found in Giles Tschudi's Swiss Chronicle (1572). Because there are many stories in European folklore about heroic marksmen, many historians are skeptical as to whether or not William Tell really ever lived. Although some of the main features of the legend may be based on actual occurrences, historical evidence indicates that Tell was probably a mythical figure.
Among the many literary versions of the William Tell legend is a play by Friedrich Schiller (1804). The libretto of Gioacchino Rossini's opera William Tell (1829) was adapted from Schiller's play.