Dózsa suffered defeat before Szegedin and moved to Czanad which he captured, having defeated an army of the nobility under Batory Istvan and Bishop Esakye, and having perpetrated bloody repressions on the prisoners, among them the Bishop and the royal Chancellor Teleky, for the atrocities committed on the Rakos.In Czanad be proclaimed a republic, abolition of the nobility, general equality and sovereignty of the people, and then moved toward Temesvar, to which place Batory had rushed with his army.But during the siege of this fortress which lasted for two months and while he was being reinforced by a new army under Anton Hosza, his two army columns in Upper Hungary suffered defeat in several battles at the hand of the nobility, and Johann Zapolya, with his Transylvanian army, moved against him.The peasants were attacked by Zapolya and dispersed.
Dózsa was captured, roasted on a red hot throne, and his flesh eaten by his own people, whose lives were granted to them only under this condition.
The dispersed peasants, reassembled by Lawrence and Hosza, were defeated again, and whoever fell into the hands of the enemies were either impaled or hanged.The peasants' corpses hung in thousands along the roads or at the entrances of burned-down villages.According to reports, about 60,000either fell in battle, or were massacred.The nobility took care that at the next session of the Diet, the enslavement of the peasants should again be recognised as the law of the land.
The peasant revolt in Carinthia, Camiola and Styria, the "windy marshes," which broke out at the same time, originated in a conspiracy akin to the Union Shoe, organised as early as 1503 in that region, wrung dry by imperial officers, devastated by Turkish invasions, and tortured by famines.It was this conspiracy that made the insurrection possible.
Already in 1513, the Slovenian as well as the German peasants of this region had once more raised the war banner of the Stara Prawa (The Old Rights).
They allowed themselves to be placated that time, and when in 1514 they gathered anew in large masses, they were again persuaded to go home by a direct promise of the Emperor Maximilian to restore the old rights.Still, the war of vengeance by the deceived people broke out in the Spring of 1515 with much more vigour.Here, as in Hungary,.castles and monasteries were destroyed, captured nobles being tried and executed by peasant juries.
In Styria and Carinthia, the emperor's captain Dietrichstein soon succeeded in crushing the revolt.In Carniola, it could be suppressed only through an attack from the Rain (Autumn, 1516) and through subsequent Austrian atrocities which formed a worthy counterpart to the infamies of the Hungarian nobility.
It is clear why, after a series of such decisive defeats, and after these mass atrocities of the nobility, the German peasants remained quiescent for a long time.Still, neither conspiracies nor local uprisings were totally absent.Already in 1516 most of the fugitives of the Union Shoe and Poor Konrad had returned to Suabia and to the upper Rhine.In 1517 the Union Shoe was again in full swing in the Black Forest.Joss Fritz himself, who still carried in his bosom the old Union Shoe banner of 1513, traversed the Black Forest in various directions, and developed great activity.
The conspiracy was being organised anew.Meetings were again held on the Kniebis as they had been four years before.Secrecy, however, was not maintained.
The governments learned the facts and interfered.Many were captured and executed.The most active and intelligent members were compelled to flee, among them Joss Fritz, who, although still not captured, seems, however, to have died in Switzerland a short time afterwards.At any, rate, his name is not mentioned again.
[ To part 4 ]
