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America Accidentally Attacked the Soviet Union and Other Lesser Known History Moments

Khalid Elhassan February 27, 2020 34 min

Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star - Aircraft — American F-80s in action during the Korean War. Squdron

9. From Grumbling to Rebellion

The Dozsa Hungarian Peasant Uprising. University of Pittsburgh Library

It was not long before the gathered volunteers began to voice their collective grievances against the oppressive nobles. At harvest time, the peasants refused to return and reap the fields. When the aristocrats tried to seize the peasants by force and compel them to toil, Dozsa’s conscience was stirred. He sided with the downtrodden serfs against his own class, and led the Hungarian peasants in a violent uprising that became a war of extermination against the landlords.

Hundreds of castles and noble manors were ransacked and put to the torch, while thousands of the gentry were killed, often tortured to death or executed in a variety of gruesome ways, such as crucifixion or impalement. The uprising was finally put down, and the peasantry were subjected to a reign of terror and endured a wave of retaliatory vengeance by their noble overlords, in which over 70,000 were tortured to death.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.