Story of William Tell
Once he set up a hat on a pole in the market-place of one of the principal towns, and ordered every one who passed to salute it. A certain William Tell, either through obstinacy or carelessness, failed to do so, on which Gessler, who had found out that he was an archer, ordered him as a punishment to shoot at long range an apple placed on his son’s head. In vain the father begged for any other sentence: Gessler only laughed. Seeing that entreaty was useless, Tell took two shafts, and with one he pierced straight through the apple. Gessler was annoyed at his success and, looking at him suspiciously, asked, ‘What, then, is the meaning of thy second arrow?’ The archer hesitated; and not until he had been promised his life if he would answer the truth would he speak. Then he said bluntly, ‘Had I injured my child my second shaft should not have missed thy heart.’ There was a murmur of applause from the townsmen, but the governor was enraged at such a bold answer. ‘Truly,’ he shouted, ‘I have promised thee life; but I will throw thee into a dungeon, where never more shall sun nor moon let fall their rays on thee.’ The legend goes on to relate how, though bound and closely guarded, the gallant archer made his escape, and hiding in the bushes not far from the road where Gessler must pass to his castle, he shot him and fled. ‘It is Tell’s shaft,’ said the dying man, as he fell from his horse. By his daring struggle against the tyrant William Tell became one of Switzerland’s national heroes.
Fortunately for the Swiss, Albert was so busy as ruler of all Germany that he could not give the full attention to subduing his rebellious vassals that he would have liked; and when at last he found time to visit his own estates, just as he was almost within sight of the family castle of the Habsburgs, he was murdered, not by a peasant, but by his nephew Count John, who considered that he had been unjustly robbed of his inheritance.
The task of attempting to reduce the Swiss to submission fell on a younger son of King Albert, Duke Leopold, a youth who despised the peasants of his native valleys quite as heartily as the French their ‘Jacques Bonhomme’. His army, as it wandered carelessly up the Swiss mountains, without order or pickets, resembled a hunting-party seeking a day’s amusement; and on their saddles his horsemen carried bundles of rope to hang the rebels and bind together the cattle they expected to capture as spoils.
Meeting with no opposition, Duke Leopold began to ascend the frozen side of the Morgarten; and here, as he advanced between high ridges, discovered himself in a death-trap. From the heights above, the Swiss of the Forest Cantons rained a deadly fire of stones and missiles that threw the horses below into confusion, slipping and falling on the smooth surface of the track. Then there descended from all sides small bodies of peasants armed with halberds, so sure-footed amid the snow and ice that they cut down the greater part of the Duke’s forces before they could extricate themselves and find safe ground.
Leopold escaped, but he rode from the carnage, according to his chronicler, ‘distracted and with a face like death’. Swiss independence had been vindicated by his defeat; and round the nucleus of the forest republics there soon gathered others, bound together in a federal union that, while securing the safety of all, guaranteed to each their liberties.
Charles ‘the Bold’
Other campaigns still remained to be fought on behalf of complete Swiss independence; and one of the most important of these occurred towards the end of the fifteenth century, and was waged against a military leader of Europe, Charles, Duke of Burgundy, son and successor of that Philip ‘the Good’ who had played so great a part in the latter half of the Hundred Years’ War.[39]
This Charles ‘the Bold’, sometimes called also ‘the Rash’ or ‘the Terrible’, was in many ways a typical mediaeval soldier. From his boyhood he had loved jousting—not the magnificent tourneys, in which as heir to the dukedom he could count on making a safe as well as a spectacular display of knightly courage, but real contests in which, disguised in plain armour, his strength and skill could alone win him laurels and avoid death. Strong and healthy, brave and impetuous, he loved the atmosphere of war with all its hazards and hardships. ‘I never heard him complain of weariness,’ wrote Philip de Commines, a French historian who was at one time in his service, ‘and I never saw in him a sign of fear.’
To qualities like courage and endurance Charles added failings that were often his undoing—a hot temper, impatience, and a tendency to under-estimate the wits of his opponents. His clever, ambitious brain was always weaving plans, but he did not realize that he had neither the skill nor the political vision to keep many irons in the fire without letting one get too hot or another over-cold.