His great-grandson Andreas Hofer was a member of the very important resistance group against Nazi Germany around the priest Heinrich Maier.

During the stern measures of Minister Maximilian von Montgelas and the forced recruitment into the Bavarian Army, Hofer became a leader of the anti-Bavarian movement.

Hofer begun to secretly organize insurrection, visiting villagers and holding councils of war in local inns.

Though French forces came across the Brenner Pass as a relief and a united French-Bavarian contingent counterattacked the next night, the Tyroleans fought them in the First Battle of Bergisel until Hofer and his allies won on the morning of the 13th.

While Austrian forces under General Johann Gabriel Chasteler de Courcelles moved into the Tyrolean capital and installed a provisional government led by Joseph Hormayr, Hofer advanced south, taking Bozen and Trent.

The French Marshal François Joseph Lefebvre took charge of the Tyrolean theatre, and Bavarian and Saxon forces under the command of Karl Philipp von Wrede on 13 May defeated the Austrians in a bloody skirmish at Wörgl.

Hofer became the effective commander-in-chief of the Tyrolean rebels, with the support of other leaders such as Josef Speckbacher and Father Joachim Haspinger.

On 29 May Hofer received a letter from Emperor Francis in which he promised not to sign any peace treaty that would include giving up Tyrol.

Hofer declared himself Imperial Commandant of the Tyrol in the absence of the ruler and for two months ruled the land from Hofburg in the name of the Emperor of Austria.

It was supposedly from Eugène de Beauharnais, transmitting Napoleon's order to "give him a fair trial and then shoot him".

[citation needed] In 1809 William Wordsworth wrote some sonnets to Andreas Hofer which contributed to the romanticisation of his image and the legend surrounding the insurrection.

A large painting depicting his arrest hangs in the Palace of Maria Theresa in Innsbruck, and there is an annual open-air play in Meran based on his life.

In Meran there is also a monumental statue of him opposite the train station at the beginning of the Via Andreas Hofer, which was erected by Tyrolean nationalists in 1915.

[4] The song Zu Mantua in Banden (today the anthem of the State of Tyrol) tells the story of his tragic fate and execution.