The bitterness roused by the passing of the Act of Union was not long in leading to actual bloodshed. The immediate quarrel, however, arose out of a matter connected, not with the race contest, but with the new land laws of the country. The Hungarian Diet had decided that the peasant should not only be freed from his dependence on the landlord, but should be also considered by his previous payment of dues to have earned the land on which he had worked. Naturally, disputes arose as to the extent of the land so acquired; and in more than one case the peasants were found to be claiming more than their own share. It was to redress a blunder of this kind that, on June 2, a party of National Guards, composed partly of Szeklers and partly of Magyars, entered the Roumanian village of Mihalzi (Magyar, Mihacsfalva). The exact circumstances of such a collision as that which followed will always be told differently by the most honest narrators; but it seems probable that the Roumanians, in some confused way, connected this visit with the recent struggle about the Union; and it is certain that the race-hatred between the Szekler and the Roumanians soon became inflamed. The National Guard fired, and several of the Roumanians fell. The others fled; but their previous resistance soon produced a rumour of a general Roumanian insurrection. The Magyars were seized with a panic; the Roumanian National Committee was dissolved, and several of their clergy and other leaders were imprisoned. Had the Roumanians been now organized by Austrian officers it is possible that less might have been heard of the savagery of the new warfare. Had some of their own leaders, who afterwards tried to control them, been ready at this time to take the lead, many of the actual cruelties might never have taken place. But just at this time the Emperor answered the deputation of May 15 by referring the Roumanians to the Magyar Ministry for the redress of their grievances, and declaring that equality could only be carried out by enforcing the Act of Union. This rebuff was accompanied by a letter from Schaguna written somewhat in the same sense; and thus, finding that some of their leaders had deserted them; that others were imprisoned; that the Emperor was discouraging their complaints; that the Magyars were denouncing them as rebels, and the Szekler making raids on their territory, the Roumanians began to defend themselves by a warfare which rapidly became exceptionally barbarous and savage.