The Archer Who Split an Apple, and a Nation's Chains

In the traditional telling, the date is precise: 18 November 1307. Albrecht Gessler, the Austrian Habsburg reeve of Altdorf in the canton of Uri, has raised a pole in the village square, hung his ducal hat atop it, and ordered every passerby to bow before it as a sign of submission. Wilhelm Tell, said in popular legend to be a poor farmworker from Bürglen, was nonetheless known far and wide as an expert mountain climber and marksman with the crossbow. He walks past the pole with his young son and refuses to bow.

For his defiance Tell is arrested. Gessler, both intrigued by Tell's reputation as an archer and resentful of his insolence, devises a punishment as cruel as it is theatrical: Tell and his son will both be executed unless the father can shoot an apple from the boy's head in a single shot. Tell takes the challenge. He splits the apple clean, sparing his son.

But Gessler notices something: Tell had drawn not one but two bolts from his quiver before the shot. Pressed to explain, Tell hesitates. Only after Gessler promises to spare his life does Tell admit the truth — the second bolt was meant for Gessler himself, had the first one struck his son. Enraged at being outwitted rather than obeyed, Gessler goes back on the spirit of his promise: he will not kill Tell, but he will imprison him for life in the dungeon at Küssnacht.

Tell is bound and placed in a boat bound across Lake Lucerne. A storm rises, threatening to capsize the vessel, and the terrified guards beg Gessler to free Tell so he can take the helm and save them all. Gessler relents. Tell steers the boat to a rocky shelf — remembered ever since as the Tellsplatte, marked by a memorial chapel since the 16th century — and leaps to freedom, letting the boat drift on without him.