176 HUNGARIAN LITERATURE notary. More cruel still were the effects of corruption upon the peasants. Viola was a wel l-to-do peasant, a good man and perfectly happy with his family. But the provinciai magistrate took a fancy to his wife, and as she indignantly repelied his advances, he began to persecute the husband· Viola was taken prisoner, and although innocent, was condemned to be tlogged. Unable to endure this humilia tion and inj ustice, he tore bimself from the grasp of the constables, and in a frenzy of rage and despair, killed one . o f them, severely wounded another, and rushed away into the forest and became a highwayman. Thus does bad ad ministration ereatc Iawless men. Next to The Village Notary carne (in 1847) a historical novel : Hungary ill 1415. In this he used as a basis one of the most terrihle events of H ungary's past, the great peasan t revolution . The pope had prociai rned a crusade agai ost the Turks and eighty thousand Hungarian crusaders were assembled under the leadership of George Dósa. But suddenly the army (the cruciatcs or kurucz as they were called later) resolved not to march agaiost the Turks, but t o turn agaiost the nobles, and they proceeded to do so with very great cruelty. Ultimately, however, the nohles were victorious and they took a terrihle revenge. Forty thousand men were slaughtered. The leader, Dósa, was crowned with a diadem of red-hot iron, and th e rebel peasants were punished by the Ioss of their sole remain i ng right, that of moving freely fro m one town to another. Th is fatal revenge divided the nation into two classes, the privileged and unprivileged, for centuries. Eőtvős depicted that terrihle period with considerable historical truth, attained by arduous study. The story opens with the assembling of th e crusaders and closes with Dósa.' s cruel punishment.
