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.