I have before alluded to the peculiarity which existed in the old system preserving to the peasant his personal freedom, though the land was burdened with duties.  It was not till 1838 that the Austrians introduced the conscription, and subsequently they carried out the law with a brutality that made the innovation thoroughly detested by the peasantry.  Accustomed to their tradition of personal freedom, the forced military service in itself was regarded with intense dislike.  The richer classes were enabled to pay a certain sum of money for exemption, but the poor were helpless; they were dragged from their houses and sent to distant parts of the empire, to serve for a long period of years.  As cases had not unfrequently occurred of the recruits running away, they were subjected to the ignominy of being chained together in gangs; and as if this was not enough, many superfluous brutalities were inflicted by the Austrian officials.

To escape from this hated service, many a young man fled from his home in anticipation of the next levy of the conscription, and hid himself in the shepherds’ tanya in the plain.  These remote dwellings in the distant puszta were no bad hiding—­places, and the fugitives were freely harboured by the shepherds, who shared the animosity of the “poor lads” against the Austrian conscription.  In course of time these outlaws found honest work difficult to procure; they became, in short, vagabonds on the face of the earth, and ended by forming themselves into robber bands.  They had also their class grievance against the rich, who had been enabled to buy themselves off from serving in the army.  The numbers of the original fugitives were soon increased by evil-doers from all sides—­ruffians who had a natural bent for rapine—­and a plague of robbers was the result, threatening all parts of Hungary.  The mischief grew to such serious proportions, and it transpired that the robbers had everywhere accomplices in the towns and villages.  Persons of apparently respectable position were suspected of favouring them; they were called “poor lads,” and a glamour of patriotism was flung over the fugitives from Austrian tyranny.

During the war of independence these robber bands rallied round their elected chief, Shandor Bozsa, and actually offered their services to the Hungarian Government, as they desired to take part in the great national struggle.  The Provisional Government accepted their services, and they came pouring in from every part of the country.  At first they behaved very well, and in fact many of these “irregulars” distinguished themselves by acts of great valour.  In the end it was the old story; they soon showed a degree of insubordination that rendered them worse than useless to the regular army.  By the time the struggle for independence had found its melancholy ending at Villagos, these fellows were again at their old tricks of horse-stealing and cattle-lifting, and they went so far as to waylay even the honved,