their own men as president of the village community; and while the landowners oppressed them in the country, the Saxon guilds excluded them from the trade of the towns. So they remained a race of shepherds, without culture and wealth, among the warriors of the Magyar and Szekler, and the prosperous traders of the Saxons. When, then, the reforming zeal of Joseph II. was extended to Transylvania, the Roumanians alone hailed it with delight; for, while, in his eagerness for a united Empire, the Emperor tried to sweep away all the special organizations of separate self-government so dear to the ruling races, he introduced sweeping reforms in favour of the serfs. He put forth an Edict, securing to the peasant an amount of liberty not hitherto enjoyed by him. No peasant was to be hindered from marriage, or from studying in other places, or from following different kinds of work; none was to be turned out of his village or land at bidding of the landlord; the power of the landlord to impose new burdens (already restricted by the Urbarium of Maria Theresa) was to be still further limited; and the county officials were to protect the dependant from any oppression of his landlord. The hopes of the Roumanians were naturally raised by this Edict; and many of them believed, when a general conscription followed, that by entering the army they could escape serfdom. The lords, backed by many of the officials, hindered this attempt, and interfered to prevent the carrying out of the Edict. Thereupon the Roumanians rose in insurrection, under two leaders, Hora and Kloska; and all those horrors followed which are naturally connected with an agrarian rising of uncivilized serfs, and the violent suppression of it by hardly more civilized tyrants.