covered with favours at court, and supplied for their enterprise with
money, arms, and ammunition. The Hungarians, confiding in the royal
proclamation, and not wishing to provoke a civil conflict, did not hunt
out those proscribed traitors in their lair, and only adopted measures
for checking any extension of the rebellion. But soon afterward the
inhabitants of South Hungary, of Servian race, were excited to rebellion
by precisely the same means.

These were also declared by the king to be rebels, but were
nevertheless, like the others, supplied with money, arms, and
ammunition. The king's commissioned officers and civil servants enlisted
bands of robbers in the principality of Servia to strengthen the rebels,
and aid them in massacring the peaceable Hungarian and German
inhabitants of the Banat. The command of these rebellious bodies was
further entrusted to the rebel leaders of the Croatians.

During this rebellion of the Hungarian Servians, scenes of cruelty were
witnessed at which the heart shudders; the peaceable inhabitants were
tortured with a cruelty which makes the hair stand on end. Whole towns
and villages, once flourishing, were laid waste. Hungarians fleeing
before these murderers were reduced to the condition of vagrants and
beggars in their own country; the most lovely districts were converted
into a wilderness.***

The greater part of the Hungarian regiments were, according to the old
system of government, scattered through the other provinces of the
empire. In Hungary itself, the troops quartered were mostly Austrian;
and they afforded more protection to the rebels than to the laws, or to
the internal peace of the country. The withdrawal of these troops, and
the return of the national militia, was demanded of the government, but