From time immemorial brigandage has been the principal scourge of the great tracts of wild country beyond the eastern Alps. The penal code has always bristled with laws against highway robbery and pillage. The ancient nobility, entrenched in their fortified castles or hidden safely within rocky fastnesses, were so many freebooters and road-agents who issued forth to prey upon their defenceless victims. They drew around them a strong body of vassals, peasants, herdsmen and shepherds, and organised them into great bands of brigands, constantly engaged in extorting ransoms and levying blackmail in the surrounding districts. The evil example of these lawless chieftains was followed by the “free” towns, and life and property were everywhere insecure. Reference to this state of things is to be found in a royal decree published by Mathias Corvinus in the fifteenth century, reciting that “the number of criminals has so much increased that no one is safe either on the public roads or even in his own house.” But the most stringent laws proved powerless to repress brigandage and general rapine. Whole villages were devastated by armed bands under powerful and capable leaders, who carried their depredations far and wide through the Carpathians. We may quote from the record of a traveller of the seventeenth century, who, when making a journey from Poland into Hungary, was forced to seek the protection of an escort of brigands to defend him from the attacks of other brigands who dominated the mountain road and the whole country-side. Their chief was one Janko, who received and entertained the traveller hospitably, and he was present at a great feast to celebrate a successful attack upon a caravan of merchants whom they had despoiled. He was entirely at the mercy of these questionable friends, who proposed to break one of his legs to prevent him from resuming his journey prematurely. He escaped, happily, and after thirty-six hours’ wandering reached a village, where no one could be found to guide him further, lest they should offend the brigands. The band was presently captured, and the traveller was forced to witness the tortures inflicted upon Janko, who was flayed alive by his executioners; his skin was wound round him in long strips, and he was then hung in the sun on an iron hook, where he lingered for three days. The other brigands were also flayed and broken on the wheel. It was about this time that the famous band of cannibal-brigands under Hara Pacha terrorised Hungary.