William Tell Shoots An Apple Off His Sons Head

William Tell Shoots An Apple Off His Sons Head ?

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? As the country’s founding father, William Tell is a legendary Swiss folk hero.

William Tell was a farmer and as the story goes – in 1307, an agent of the Hapsburg duke of Austria, placed a Hapsburg hat on a pole and ordered passersby to remove their caps in respect.

? William Tell refused, and was then ordered to shoot an apple off his son’s head with an arrow at 120 paces – or he and his son would both be killed.

William Tell obliged, and succeeded in hitting the apple off his son’s head in a single shot!

? The Habsburg agent asked William Tell why he had a second arrow in his jacket, to which William Tell replied,

“If the first arrow had killed my son, I would have shot the second at you, and I would not have missed.”

What happened next, kicked off a revolution among the poor, medieval inhabitants and led to an overthrow of foreign rule.

? William Tell was promptly arrested and bound for a dungeon in a neighboring castle.
However he escaped, recruited others in an uprising – and the rest is a proud part of Swiss history.

? Unfortunately, many historians doubt that William Tell was actually a real person.
There’s no evidence that he ever existed, or that anyone shot an arrow off a child’s head.

More likely, the tale is amalgamation of events real and imagined.

? While the uprising against Austria is steeped in reality, the addition of William Tell’s daring feat appeared some 250 years after the supposed events occurred.

However, William Tell literally stands as a symbol of political freedom.
There is a bronze statue of him in Uri, a mountain village that is called the birthplace of modern Switzerland.

? The ‘Tell Monument’ is a memorial to William Tell in the market place of Altdorf, Canton of Uri, Switzerland.
Picture credit – Paradise Chronicle