TELL, Wrmara,r, was, according to Swiss tradition, a patriot who, in the 14th c., res cued his native district from the tyranny of the house of Austria. His story has been variously told, but that version which has found the widest currency is the following. In the beginning of the 14th c., Albert I. of Austria was striving to annex the three Wald stAdte, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, to his family estates. Hermann Gessler, his bailiff (or Landvogt), lived at the castle of Kussnacht, and perpetrated on the people of the dis trict the most atrocious cruelties. •A league was formed of the principal men of the Wald stAdte to resist the Austrian pretensions, and to it belonged Walter FOrst, and William Tell, his son-in-law. Among other acts of tyranny, Gessler placed the ducal hitt of Austria on the top of a long pole, erected in the market-place of Altorf, and gave orders that no should pass without uncovering his head. Tell and his little boy one day took no notice of the hat, and were at once dragged before Gessler. He, hearing that Tell enjoyed great reputation as a cross-bowman, resolved to make his skill a means of pun ishing him. He was ordered to shoot an apple from his son's head, and told that if he missed it, he should die. To the amazement of all present, he hit the apple without injuring the child. But this did not satisfy Gessler. Turning to Tell, he asked him what he meant to have done with a second arrow he had in his girdle. " To have shot you if it had slain my son," was the reply. Tell was then seized, bound, and thrown into a boat on the lake of Lucerne, to be taken with Gessler and his men to the castle of Klissnacht. A sudden Alpine storm sprung up. Tell was the only man on board who knew the shore, and could manage a boat in such weather. He was allowed to take the helm, and he soon ran her toward a rocky ledge; he there seized his bow and arrows, sprang on shore, and pushed the vessel back into the water. The storm, however, abated, and Gessler and his party landed. Tell lay in wait for them in a rocky defile. and as they passed, he shot Gessler through the heart. This befell in 1307, and was fa lowed by the great Swiss war with Austria—the first of a series which lasted till 1499— in which, however, Tell took no prominent part. Tell was drowned, it is added, in 1350, in attempting to save a friend during a great flood of the river Schlichen.
There is evidence that, in 1387, a religious service was instituted to commemorate the act of Tell at the place where he lived; and that, iu the following year, Tell's chapel was built on the spot where the boat was said to have landed. Russ and Etterlin, chron iclers who lived toward the end of the 15th c., told his story as true history. Tschudi, who wrote in the first part of the 16th c., repeated it in the form in which it is now
familiar to us, and in which it was adopted by Schiller, in his well-known drama. So early as the end of the 16th c., however, doubts were expressed of its authenticity. Guilmann, who wrote a book, De Rebus Ilelretiefs, called in question the very existence of Tell. What, he asks, has become of his family and relatives? Why was he not spoken of by his contemporaries? Grasser, the author of a Swiss Heldenbuch, pointed out a striking resemblance between Tel: and Toke, the hero of an old Scandinavian fable, recorded by Saxo Grammaticus. From that period, incredulity became general, and several books were published to show that the story was legendary. One of these, Guillaume Tell; fable danoise, was burned by the public hangman at Uri, and then triotic feeling was manifested on the subject, which, it is believed, made Swiss writers, • J. von Muller the historian, cautious in expressing farther doubt. Voltaire, in speaking of Tell, makes the remark, that "l'histoire de la pomme est bien suspecte," and asserts that no part of the tale had a foundation in fact. His opinion became known all over Europe; and since then, a whole library has been published on the story of Tell,. in Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, and France. The most important works, however, bearing ou the question, are (1) Ideler's work, Die Sage vom Seheusse des Tell, published at Berlin in 1826, in which it is shown that the incident of the apple is purely legendary; (2) an edition of Russ's chronicle, edited in 1834, by M. Schneller of Lucerne, in which it is proved that serious disparities exist between the different versions of the story as told by the Swiss chroniclers; and (3) a work containing a series of documents relating to early Swiss history, published in 1835 by M. Kopp, also of Lucerne, in which it is as satisfactorily shown that, although a continuous series of charters exist relative to the bailiffs of KtIssnacht in the 14th c., there is no Gessler among them. Tell is nowhere mentioned in contemporary records; but it need not, therefore, be inferred that an obscure peasant did not exist of the name, who shot an Austrian bailiff on the banks of the lake of Lucerne, who by this act caused a revolt, and who lost his life in attempting to save that of a friend. If such incidents really occurred—and from the early founda tion of Tell's chapel, and other facts connected with it, we must presume they did—it would be easy to explain how they became connected with the old fable of the tyrant, the bowman, and the apple.—Ample information on the Tell controversy will be found in Hisely's Recherches (1843); and Viseher's Die Sage von der Befreiung der Waldstddte (1867).