not only were they reduced to abject poverty by the Dahis (the leaders of the Janissaries), but they were attacked in their religion, their morality, and their honour. No husband was secure as to his wife, no father as to his daughter, no brother as to his sister. The Church, the cloister, the monks, the priests, all were violated. Art thou still our Czar? then come and free us from these evildoers, and if thou wilt not save us, at least tell us that we may decide whether to flee to the mountains and forests, or to seek in the rivers a termination of our miserable existence.[31] The Sultan was willing to listen to these grave complaints, and to put down the turbulent Dahis and their attendant Janissaries, not so much out of sympathy for the rayas as in order to restore his own authority in the province and as a first step towards the reformation or suppression of the Janissaries elsewhere throughout his Empire. He began by threatening the Dahis. If they did not mend their ways, he would send an army against them. These ruffians, knowing that the Sultan could not venture to employ a Moslem force against them, came to the conclusion that he meant to arm the rayas of the province. They determined to anticipate this by a general massacre. If no resistance had been offered to this, the whole Christian population of Serbia would have been exterminated. The rayas, however, were no longer the submissive and patient people they had been reduced to by servitude for two hundred and fifty years under the Turks, during which no one of them had been allowed to carry about him a weapon of defence. As has been already stated, they had been invited to rebel by the Austrians in their last war with the Turks, had been armed by them, and had given valuable assistance. Great numbers of them had been trained as soldiers, and retained their arms when the Austrians retired from the country, after the peace of Sistova, which provided no adequate security for these unfortunate people. They now, in 1807, rose in arms against their oppressors, who were bent on exterminating them. They elected as their leader George Petrowitsch (Kara George, as he is known in history), a peasant like themselves, a most brave man, who had served in the Austrian army, and who soon showed great qualities as a general. Under his leadership the rayas succeeded in driving the Dahis and Janissaries out of the country districts.