Now commenced the carnage. The nobles were imprisoned and murdered, their castles burned, and their fields laid waste. The aristocracy of the borders, whose territorial domains the insurgents had not yet reached, armed themselves, and having captured some of the rebels, put them to death under circumstances of exaggerated cruelty, executing them by the power which the Magyar possessed of administering justice as an independent prince.
These executions, unsanctioned by the emperor, raised the indignation of the people to ungovernable fury, and they now demanded the entire extinction of the nobles. They were summoned to resign their titles, and, until the coronation of Joseph, the rightful King of Hungary, they were to obey their lawful ruler, Horja.
The nobles, not having condescended to take any notice of Horja's summons, the people began to pillage and murder with redoubled fury. They spared every thing, however, belonging to the emperor—the only nobleman who, for the future, was to be suffered to own land in Hungary.
Joseph could no longer turn a deaf ear to the remonstrances of the Magyars. He had hoped to be able to quell the rebellion by lenity, offering a general amnesty to all offenders with the exception of Horja, for whose capture a reward of three hundred ducats was offered.
But the poor, deluded peasantry, having faith in no one but Horja, thought that the offer of pardon was nothing but an artifice of the enemy. The emperor, then was obliged to march the imperial troops against the people, and to bring about with musket and cannon what he had hoped to accomplish through moral suasion.
Horja, finding that he had nothing more to hope from the clemency of the emperor, tried to induce the disaffected nobles to accept his peasantry, and rebel against Joseph. But they rejected the offer with disdain, and gave their support to the imperial troops.
Thousands delivered themselves up, imploring mercy, which was granted them. Thousands fled to the mountains, and thousands were taken prisoners. Among these latter were Horja and Krischan. Both were condemned to death. Horja pleaded hard to be allowed to see the emperor, alleging that he had something of importance to communicate to him, but his prayer was not granted.
Perhaps Joseph suspected that Horja would prove to him, what he already dreaded to know, namely, that the nobles had connived at this insurrection of the peasantry to frighten him with the consequences of his own acts.
Horja was not permitted, then, to see his sovereign. He was broken on a wheel on the market-place at Carlsburg, and two thousand of the cap-bared insurgents were forced to witness the cruel spectacle. [Footnote: On the 3d of January, 1785.]
Thus ended this fearful outbreak, by which four thousand men perished, sixty-two villages and thirty-two castles were consumed; and the deluded peasantry, instead of freedom, happiness, and wealth, found threefold oppression at the hands of their masters. The magnates and nobles, meanwhile, stood upon the ruins of their castles, and cried out: