United States or Antigua and Barbuda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They chose the massive group of mountains which border on the Province of Bénévent for the scene of their operations, and made Naples their headquarters. During the whole of the preceding winter they were occupied in making their preparations, and endeavoring to gain the support of the peasants of the near-by villages.
If you were, I would be ready to arrange matters." He looked at me searchingly. "Unfortunately, I am not any relation of his," I answered. "His father and mother were peasants on my estate of Serveti, when it still was mine. They died when he was a baby, and I took care of him and educated him." "Yes, he is well educated," reflected the count, "for I examined him myself.
The duke thought it would be politic, and, at the same time, inexpensive, to abandon all claim to these few acres, which were now shared by forty or fifty peasants. "My friends," he exclaimed, in a loud voice, "I renounce, for myself and for my descendants, all claim to the lands belonging to my house which you have purchased. They are yours I give them to you!"
Noble or ecclesiastic, he had to submit to the folkmote Wer daselbst Wasser und Weid genusst, muss gehorsam sein "Who enjoys here the right of water and pasture must obey" was the old saying. Even when the peasants became serfs under the lord, he was bound to appear before the folkmote when they summoned him.
The Bishop of Norwich, with a following of knights and men-at-arms, fell on his camp and made short work of his majesty. The king, soon forgetting his pledges, led an army of forty thousand men through Kent and Essex, and ruthlessly executed the peasant leaders. Some fifteen hundred of them were put to death. The peasants resisted stubbornly, but they were put down.
The rural class itself, forming the majority of the nation, began to feel the influence of the revolutionary propaganda. The lot of the peasants was wretched. They were obliged, by the system of the mir, to cultivate soil which they could not acquire. The government resolved immediately to conciliate this large class of peasants by turning them into proprietors.
Henceforth mass is said every Sunday in each village, and the peasants enjoy their processions on Corpus-Christi day, when their crops are blessed. A great public want is satisfied.
Irène, possessing an enormous fortune and accustomed to the indulgence of every caprice, soon began to look upon herself as of superior clay to these peasants who doffed their hats to her as she passed. She believed in the great power of money, and the Countess encouraged this belief. But illness came, and the Countess was confined to her sofa by paralysis.
I tell you that your last act, by which you have declared this army to be rebels, is decisive. You have armed and excited the whole people against them, even to the peasants and the peasants' children, and the insults and injuries thus received, however richly deserved and dearly avenged, are all set down. to your account.
Henri, with his few companions, when driven from the banks of the Loire, dismissed the eighteen soldiers, whose number would only have attracted attention without being sufficient for protection; but the five chiefs crossed the fields and wandered through the country without meeting a single inhabitant all the houses were burnt down, and the few remaining peasants hidden in the woods.
Word Of The Day