CHAPTER VII
GESSLER
CHAPTER VII
ASSASSINATION OF GESSLER
(A.D. 1307.)
THE assassination of Julius Cæsar and of the first Roman Emperors led to greater demoralization of the people, and thereafter to anarchy, bloodshed, civil war, and ultimately to an atrocious despotism; but at an interval of twelve hundred and forty years after the death of Nero there occurred a political assassination, growing out of personal revenge, which freed a whole people from oppression and placed the murderer among the heroes of mankind and the liberators of nations. We speak of William Tell, the national hero of Switzerland, who in 1307 deliberately murdered Gessler, the Austrian governor.
This governor, who resided at the castle of Kuessnacht, had committed the greatest outrages and acts of despotism against the inhabitants of his gubernatorial district, embracing the so-called three Waldstädte (Forest Cantons),—Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. Until then these Forest Cantons had enjoyed a republican government, and had given to the German Empire a merely nominal recognition, by acknowledging the German Emperor as their suzerain. There is a great resemblance in the relations between these Swiss Cantons and the German Empire to the relations which existed, before the South African war, between the two Boer Republics and the crown of England. Rudolph of Hapsburg, himself a Swiss by birth, who had been elected German Emperor, had pursued a liberal policy toward the Cantons and in special charters had guaranteed to them their inherited rights and liberties. But his son Albrecht the First, who succeeded Rudolph on the imperial throne, resolved to do away with these prerogatives, deprive the Swiss Cantons of their independence, and make them subject to the crown of Austria. Theretofore the German Emperors had been represented in a few cities of Switzerland by bailiffs, who exerted the same authority in the Cantons as our federal judges in United States Territories; but Albrecht changed their duties and authority entirely, investing them with many additional powers, so that they became practically governors of their districts, appointed by the Emperor and administering their office as imperial officials.
Against this change the inhabitants of the Cantons entered their solemn protests; they sent delegations to Albrecht to remonstrate with him; but he gave evasive answers, increased the soldiery protecting the governors, shut his ears to all complaints about their arrogance and growing usurpation, and secretly encouraged them “to do all in their power to break the stubborn resistance of these uncouth mountaineers and boors, and make them obedient subjects of the Austrian crown.” To the strong men of the Cantons, who had never bowed their necks under the yoke of a foreign despot, the tyranny of these Austrian governors became intolerable; their leading men made up their minds to throw it off by all means, and to maintain their independence at any cost. Even the members of the nobility scattered through the Cantons were indignant at the arbitrary and haughty ways of the imperial bailiffs, who treated them with the same arrogance as they treated the common people; they therefore made common cause with the latter, so that practically the imperial officials were isolated in a hostile country, without friends or party.