William Tell

One of the game’s quests follows William Tell along the shores of Lake Lucerne. Here is the story it tells, place by place, without saying how to complete it: that is the walkthrough’s job.

The places of the legend

The Rütli

Tradition has it that men of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden swore here to help one another against the bailiffs, around 1291. The meadow now belongs to the Confederation.

Altdorf

The bailiff Gessler had people bow to his hat, set on a pole. Tell refused, and was made to shoot an apple off his son’s head.

The Tellsplatte

Arrested, Tell was taken by boat across Lake Uri. In the storm he was untied to steer: he leapt onto a rock ledge on the shore.

The Hohle Gasse

Tell waited for Gessler here and killed him with a crossbow bolt. The legend makes it the spark of the Waldstätten’s freedom.

Between history and legend

William Tell, between history and legend. The story first appears around 1470 in the White Book of Sarnen: the Rütli oath, the apple of Altdorf, the leap onto the Tellsplatte, the sunken lane at Küssnacht. Yet no record of the time shows that Tell existed, and the apple shot is already told around 1200 by the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus.

The pact, however, is real: the Federal Charter of August 1291, in which Uri, Schwyz and Nidwalden promise each other help, is kept in Schwyz. Its date became the national day, 1 August.

Friedrich Schiller made Tell the hero of a play in 1804, Gioachino Rossini of an opera in 1829; the Altdorf monument dates from 1895.

True or not, Tell remains the figure of the founding cantons’ freedom.