He was therefore ill-prepared for the news which reached him from Hungary. He had freed the people from slavery and taxation, and had exacted that the nobles should pay their share of the imperial taxes. He had instituted a general conscription, and the most powerful Magyar in Hungary was bound to serve, side by side, with the lowest peasant. Finally he had forbidden the use of any other language in Hungary save the German.
A cry of indignation was heard from every turreted castle in the land. They were wounded in the rights hitherto guaranteed to them by every emperor of Austria. And above all other oppression, they were to be robbed of their mother tongue, that they might lose their nationality, and become a poor Austrian dependency. [Footnote: That was precisely Joseph's object: and yet he wondered that this people did not love him.]
But Joseph's enactments were detested not only by the nobles, they were equally unwelcome to the people. The latter were horror-stricken by the general conscription, and fled by thousands to take refuge among the mountains from the conscribing officers.
One of their own class, however, succeeded in drawing them from their hiding-places. The loud voice of Horja rang throughout every valley, and ascended to every mountain-summit. He called them to liberty and equality. He asserted that nobility was to be destroyed in Hungary. There were to be no more castles, no more magnates of the land. The emperor had promised as much in Vienna. He had sworn to free the Hungarian peasantry, and to bring the proud noble down to an equality with his serf.
The hour for fulfilment had arrived. All the new laws regarded the nobles alone, they had no reference to the peasantry whom the emperor had promised to make free, happy, and rich. He needed the help of his Hungarians. They must complete what he had begun. The peasant was to be free, happy, rich.
This was the magic song which attracted the boor from his thatch under the hill, and the goat-herd from his hut amid the mountain-peaks.
Horja was the Arion who sang—and now to his standard flocked thousands of deluded beings, all eager to complete the work which the emperor had begun. Joseph had made them free—it remained for themselves to plunder the nobles, and appropriate their long-hoarded wealth. It was the emperor's will. He hated the Magyars, and loved the peasantry.
If ever any of those poor, ignorant wretches held back, Horja showed them a massive gold chain to which the emperor's portrait was attached. This had been sent to him by Joseph himself, and in proof thereof he had a parchment full of gilt letters, with a great seal attached to it, which made him Captain-General of Hungary. They could all come and read the emperor's own writing if they chose.
Poor fellows! None of them knew how to read, so that Krischan, a friend of Horja and a priest of the Greek Church, read it for all who doubted.
This brought conviction to the most skeptical. That a Greek priest could read a lie, never once entered the heads of these simple children of nature.