Gessler ordered the chains to be removed from Tell’s limbs and ordered him to take the helm, promising him life, liberty, and a full pardon if he should bring them safe into port. Tell took the helm, and the boat, obedient to its master’s hand, sped through the storm-tossed waves like a seabird dancing on the surface. But turning round a rock-bound bluff close to the shore, Tell suddenly took up his cross-bow lying on the bench near by, and with a mighty leap jumped on the rock, hurling the boat far back into the hissing and tempestuous flood.
Gessler also escaped from the watery grave, but only to meet his doom on land even before he had reached his home. Tell was lying in ambush on the road from the lake to Kuessnacht. It was the road which Gessler and his party had to take on their return to the castle, if they should succeed in effecting a landing on the shore. After some time Gessler, accompanied by a few friends, came in sight. No sooner had the party entered the defile than Gessler, shot through the heart by Tell’s unerring arrow, fell from his horse.
Tell’s shot was the signal for the general uprising of the people of Switzerland. Years of struggle and warfare against Austria’s nobility and armed forces followed Tell’s heroic act, but the entire independence of Switzerland was finally secured. Switzerland is to this day a free and independent republic, and Tell’s name shines with imperishable lustre not only as its great national hero, but also among the immortal patriots and liberators of mankind.
We are well aware that recent historical criticism has expressed doubt as to Tell’s great act of deliverance, and even as to his existence, and that in some histories the tale is simply relegated to the domain of legend and tradition. But there is no real justification for this decision. It is founded only on a statement in the chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus recording a feat of archery in Scandinavia similar to that of William Tell, and performed hundreds of years before Tell’s day.
As Johannes von Mueller, the great historian, judiciously says: “It shows but scanty knowledge of history to deny the truth of a historical event simply because another similar event occurred in another century and country.” But truth or fiction, history or legend, the heroic act and name of Tell will live on, immortal and inspiring, as they have lived during the last six hundred years. Poets and novelists have immortalized the great national hero of Switzerland in song and story. Frederick Schiller, Germany’s greatest dramatist, has made him the central hero of his greatest drama, and has given his name to that great hymn of liberty and patriotism, which stirred up the German nation to its glorious struggle against Napoleon the First. It is one of the few truly patriotic assassinations recorded in history.