time, but rather that the country had withstood it so long.
The reduction of the peasants to servitude brought upon them the greatest suffering. Victorin Vsehrd, an author of a book on the laws of the country, wrote as follows: “This great injustice is done all over the country that the nobles, selling to each other villages, make no written stipulation as to the service expected from the peasants; and because no such stipulation is made, the service demanded is beyond all justice, heavenly, Christian, human, and worldly; so that not even the Turks nor any other heathen are guilty of such cruelty. From this oppression, unheard of before in Bohemia, great evils arise. The people, driven to despair, forsake their lands, and, escaping into the forests, become thieves, robbers, and incendiaries, and perpetrators of other crimes. The land thus becomes desolate, and hard times and famine follow. Others rise in rebellion against their masters, and, forsaking wives and children, betake themselves to the mountains, whence they are ready to sally out armed upon their enemies. Thus it happened not long ago in Moravia, the people rose in rebellion, fell upon their lord, beat him, and wounded him so that he died from the effects of his injuries. And now in Bohemia, in the district of Litomeritz, the people arose against their master, Knight Adam Ploskovsky, on account of excessive and unheard-of service required, and what will come from it is not yet known.”
The last-mentioned rebellion refers to that connected with the name of Dalibor, so well known in Bohemian tradition, song, and story.
The peasants of Knight Adam, enduring extreme cruelties, rose in rebellion, took their master prisoner,
