William Tell
The story of William Tell's skill in shooting at and striking the apple which had been placed on the head of his little son by order of Gessler, the tyrannical Austrian bailiff of Uri, is so closely bound up with the legendary history of the origin of the Swiss Confederation that they must be considered together. Both appear first in the 15th century, probably as results of the war for the Toggenburg inheritance (1436-50) ; for the intense hatred of Austria, greatly increased by her support of the claims of Zürich, favoured the circulation of stories which assumed that Swiss freedom was of immemorial antiquity, while, as the war was largely a struggle between the civic and rural elements in the Confederation, the notion that the (rural) Schwyzers were of Scandinavian descent at once separated them from and raised them above the German inhabitants of the towns.
William Tell, a peasant of Burgeln, near Altorf, was celebrated for his resistance to the tyranny of the Austrian governor Gessler [or Gassier]. Switzerland consisted of a great number of secular aiid ecclesiastical districts, belonging partly to the hereditary dominions of the house of Hupsburg, and partly to the German empire. Albert I, emperor of Germany, a grasping prince, eager to make territorial acquisitions, wished to unite the Forest Towns with his hereditary estates, and proposed to them to renounce their connexion with the empire, and to submit themselves to him as duke of Austria.
They rejected his offers, and were in consequence so ill treated and oppressed by the imperial governors, that, iu 1307, Uri, Schweitz and Underwalden formed a league, under the influence of three brave men, Walter Furst (Tell's father-in-law], Arnold of Melchtlial, and Werner Stauffachcr. Tell was also one of this league.
Gessler now pushed his insolence so far as to require the Swiss to uncover their heads before his hat (as an emblem of the Austrian sovereignty), and condemned Tell, who refused to comply with this mandate, to shoot an apple from the head of his own son. Tell was successful in his attempt, but confessed that a second arrow, which he bore about his person, was intended, in case he had failed, for the punishment of the tyrant, and was therefore retained prisoner.
While he was crossing the lake of the Four Cantons, or lake of Lucerne, in the same boat with Gessler, a violent stonn threatened the destruction of th« sk iff. Tell, as the most vigorous and skilful helmsman, was set free ; and he conducted the boat successfully to the shore, but seized the opportunity to spring upon a rock, pushing off the barque. He had fortunately taken his bow with him; and when the governor finally escaped the storm, and reached the shore, Tell shot him dead, on the road to Kussuacht.
The death of Gessler was a signal for a general rising, and a most obstinate war between the Swiss and Austria, which was not brought to a close until 1499. Tell was present at the battle of Morgarten, and is supposed to have lost his life in on inundation in 1350.
Such is the story of William Tell, which, atteated by chapels, by the designation of the rock on which he leaped, by paintings and other circumstances, has been called in doubt by many, but is sanctioned by others. Saxo Grammaticus relates a similar story of a Danish king, Harold, and a certain Tholko; but the tradition might have been transmitted from Germany to the north by means of the Hanse towns. There is one circumstance which may be considered sufficient to attest the truth of the main points of Tell's history. After the expulsion of the governors, and the demolition of their castles, it became customary among the Swiss to make pilgrimages to the place where Tell had leaped ashore; and in 1388, thirty years after his death, the canton of Uri erected a chapel (called Tell's chapel) on the rock upon which he had sprung, and caused a eulogy to be pronounced every year in memory of him.
The Tell story is first found in a ballad the first nine stanzas of which (containing the story) were certainly written before 1474. There is no mention made of the names of the bailiff or of his master, or of the hat placed on a pole. Tell is called "the first Confederate," and his feat is treated as the real and only reason why the Confederation was formed and the tyrants driven out of the land. It is probably to this ballad that Melchior Russ of Lucerne (who began his Chronicle in 1482) refers when, in his account (from Justinger) of the evil deeds of the bailiffs in the Forest districts, he excuses himself from giving the story.
We first hear of the cruelties of Austrian bailiffs in the Forest districts in the Bernese Chronicle of Conrad Justinger (1420). No names or details are given, and the dates are different in the two recensions of the Chronicle as "olden days before Bern was founded" (i.e. before 1191) and 1260. Several details, but only one name, are added in the De Nobililate et Rusliciíate Dialogus (cap. 33) of Felix Hemmerli, a canon of Zürich, who wrote it after 1451 and before 1454; in this last year he was imprisoned by the Schwyzers, whom he had repeatedly insulted and attacked in his books. According to him the men of Schwyz and of Unterwaiden were the first to rise, those of Uri following suit much later But neither Justinger nor Hemmerli makes any allusion to Tell or his feat.
The Tell story and the "atrocities" story are first found combined in a MS. known as the White Book of Sarnen. They are contained in a short chronicle written between 1467 and 1476, probably about 1470, and based on oral tradition. Many details are given of the oppressions of the bailiffs: we hear of Gessler, of the meeting of Stoupacher of Schwyz, Fürst of Uri, and a man of Nidwalden at the Rütli,- -in fact, the usual version of the legend. The chronology is very confused, but the events are placed after Rudolf's election to the empire in 1273. This is the only account in which Tell is called " der Thäll," which name he himself explains by saying, " If I were sharp (witzig) I should be called something else and not der Tall," i.e. the simpleton or slow-witted man. (It is worthy of notice that the same meaning is attributed to the name of Tokko, the hero of a similar legend in Gheysmer's abridgment of the Historia Dánica of Saxo Grammaticus, which may, somehow, have influenced the Swiss version.)
The task of filling up gaps, smoothing away inconsistencies, rounding off the tale, was accomplished by Giles Tschudi (q.v.), whose recension was adopted, with a few alterations, by Johannes von Müller in his History of the Confederation (1780). Tschudi thus finally settled the date as 1308, which had before varied from 1260 to 1334. He utterly distorts the real historical relations of the Three Lands, though he brings in many real historical names, their owners being made to perform historically impossible acts, and introduces many small additions and corrections into the story as he had received it.
William Tell (Wilhelm Tell), the last completed drama of Schiller, was written in 1804, one year before his death. Schiller's play gave the tale a world-wide renown. It is considered one of his finest works, being the most mature expression of that idea of freedom with which he had opened his poetic career in 'The Robbers' 20 years before. But whereas Karl Moor was warring against the existing order of things, the Swiss were fighting for the preservation of their ancient rights. Although the play is named after Tell, he is merely the nominal hero The real protagonists are the whole people. A drama by James Sheridan Knowles, entitled 'William Tell,' was produced by Macready in 1825, and the same theme forms the libretto of Rossini's 'Guillaume Tell' (1829).
Rossini's William Tell Overture is particularly familiar through its use in the American radio and television shows of The Lone Ranger. Several portions of the overture were used prominently in the films A Clockwork Orange and The Eagle Shooting Heroes. The overture falls into four parts, each segueing into the next.
The story was, on the ground of want of evidence, regarded as suspicious by Guilliman in a private letter of 1607, and doubts were expressed by the brothers Iselin (1727 and 1754) and by Voltaire (1754); but it was not till 1760 that the legend was definitely attacked, on the ground of its similarity to the story of Tokko, in an anonymous pamphlet by Freudenberger, a Bernese pastor. This caused great stir; it was publicly burnt by order of the government of Uri, and many more or less forged proofs and documents were produced in favour of Tell. The researches of J. E. Kopp (Urkunden zur Geschichte à. eidgenössischen Bünde, 2 parts, 1835 and 1851, and Geschichte der eidgenössischen Bünde, vol. ii., 1847), first cleared up the real early history of the league, and overthrew the legends of the White Book and Tschudi.
Since then many writers worked in the same direction. Vischer (1867) has carefully traced out the successive steps in the growth of the legend, and Rochholz (1877) has worked out the real history of Gessler as shown in authentic documents. The general result has been to show that a mythological marksman and an impossible bailiff bearing the name of a real family have been joined with confused and distorted reminiscences of the events of 1245-47, in which the names of many real persons have been inserted and many unauthenticated acts attributed to them.
The story of the skilful marksman who succeeds in striking some small object placed on the bead of a man or child is very widely spread; we find it in Denmark (Tokko), Norway (two versions), Iceland, Holstein, on the Rhine, and in England (William of Cloudesley). How it came to be localized in Uri we do not know; possibly, through the story of the Scandinavian colonization of Schwyz, the tale was fitted to some real local hero.
The alleged proofs of the existence of a real William Tell in Uri in the 14th century break down hopelessly. Popular belief in the Tell legend is still strong, despite its utter demolition at the hands of a succession of scientific Swiss historians.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
