Simultaneously with the Wuerttemberg movement, symptoms of new Union Shoe activities became manifest in Breisgau and in the Margaviate of Baden.In June, an insurrection was attempted at Buehl, but it was immediately dispersed by Margrave Philipp -- the leader, Gugel-Bastian of Freiburg, having been seized and executed on the block.
In the spring of the same year, 1514, a general peasant war broke out in Hungary.A crusade against the Turks was being preached, and, as usual, freedom was promised to the serfs and bondsmen who would join it.
About 60,000 congregated, and were to be under the command of György Dózsa, a Szekler, who had distinguished himself in the preceding Turkish wars and even attained nobility.The Hungarian knights and magnates, however, looked with disfavour upon the crusade which threatened to deprive them of their property and slaves.They hastily followed the individual hordes of peasants, and took back their serfs by force and mistreated them.
When the army of crusaders learned about it, all the fury of the oppressed peasants was unleashed.Two of the men, enthusiastic advocates of the crusade, Lawrence Mészáros and Barnabas, fanned the fire, inciting the hatred of the army against the nobility by their revolutionary speeches.
Dózsa himself shared the anger of his troops against the treacherous nobility.The army of crusaders became an army of the revolution, and Dózsa assumed leadership of the movement.
He camped with his peasants in the Rakos field near Pest.Hostilities were opened with encounters between the peasants and the people of the nobility in the surrounding villages and in the suburbs of Pest.Soon there were skirmishes, and then followed Sicilian Vespers for all the nobility who fell into the hands of the peasants, and burning of all the castles in the vicinity.The court threatened in vain.When the first acts of the people's justice towards the nobility had been accomplished under the walls of the city, Dózsa proceeded to further operations.He divided his army into five columns.Two were sent to the mountains of Upper Hungary in order to effect an insurrection and to exterminate the nobility.The third, under Ambros Szaleves, a citizen of Pest, remained on the Rakos to guard the capital.The fourth and fifth were led by Dózsa and his brother Gregor against Szegedin.
In the meantime, the nobility gathered in Pest, and called to its aid Johann Zapolya, the voivode of Transylvania.The nobility, joined by the middle-class of Budapest, attacked and annihilated the army on the Rakos, after Szaleves with the middle-class elements of the peasant army had gone over to the enemy.A host of prisoners were executed in the most cruel fashion.The rest were sent home minus their noses and ears.
