9. From Grumbling to Rebellion
It was not long before the gathered volunteers began to voice their collective grievances against the oppressive nobles. At harvest time, the peasants refused to return and reap the fields. When the aristocrats tried to seize the peasants by force and compel them to toil, Dozsa’s conscience was stirred. He sided with the downtrodden serfs against his own class, and led the Hungarian peasants in a violent uprising that became a war of extermination against the landlords.
Hundreds of castles and noble manors were ransacked and put to the torch, while thousands of the gentry were killed, often tortured to death or executed in a variety of gruesome ways, such as crucifixion or impalement. The uprising was finally put down, and the peasantry were subjected to a reign of terror and endured a wave of retaliatory vengeance by their noble overlords, in which over 70,000 were tortured to death.