Round About the Carpathians by Andrew F. Crosse
page 45 of 273 (16%)
page 45 of 273 (16%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
burdens. "A lord is a lord even in hell" is the saying of the peasants.
Mr Paget[6] tells the story of an old countess he met in Transylvania, who used to lament that "times were sadly changed, peasants were no longer so respectful as they used to be; she could remember walking to church on the backs of the peasants, who knelt down in the mud to allow her to pass over them without soiling her shoes. She could also remember, though less partial to the recollection, a rising of the peasantry, when nothing but the kindness with which her mother had generally treated them saved her from the cruel death which many of her neighbours met with." The rising here mentioned took place in 1784, when two Wallacks named Hora and Kloska were the leaders of a terrible onslaught upon the Magyar nobles. The Vienna Government was accused on this occasion of being very tardy in sending troops to quell the insurrection. It was the time when the unpopular reforms of Joseph II. were so ill received by the Magyars, and no good feeling subsisted between Hungary and the Central Government. But the most frightful outbreak of the Wallacks was, as we all know, within living memory. You can hear from the lips of witnesses descriptions of horrors committed not thirty years ago in Transylvania. Entire villages were destroyed, whole families slaughtered, down to the new-born infant. The arms of the Wallacks were supplied by Austria, for whom they were acting as a sort of militia at the time of Hungary's war of independence. The Vienna Government has been very fond of playing off the Wallacks and the Slavs against the Magyars: they have kept the pot |
|