William Tell is carried across the lake to Kussnacht but leaps away from his captor Gessler when a storm arises. Albrecht Gessler, aka Hermann, was a legendary 14th-century Habsburg bailiff whose brutal rule led to the William Tell rebellion and the eventual independence of the Old Swiss Confederacy. William Tell, an expert marksman with the crossbow. From Hutchinson's History of the Nations, published 1915.