The inhabitants of the regions enclosed between these fortresses never could tell by which road they were to expect the enemy to come. For in such topsy-turvy days as those were, every armed man was an enemy, from whom corn, cattle, and pretty women had to be hidden away, and their friendship cost as much as their enmity, and perhaps more; for if they found out at Szathmár that some nice wagon-loads of corn and hay had been captured from local marauders without first beating their brains out, the magistrates would look in next day and impose a penalty; and again, on the other hand, if it were known at Grosswardein that the Szathmárians had been received hospitably at any gentleman’s house, and the daughter of the house had spoken courteously to them, the Turks would wait until the Szathmárians had gone farther on and would then fall upon the house in question and burn it to the ground, so that the Szathmárians should not be able to sleep there again; and, as for the daughter of the house, they would carry her off to a harem, in order to save her from any further discoursing with the magistrates of Szathmár.
And, last of all, there was a third enemy to be reckoned with, and this was the countless rabble of betyárs, or freebooters, who inhabited the whole region from the marshes of Ecsed to the morasses of Alibuner, and who gave no reason at all for driving off their neighbour’s herds and even destroying his houses.
In those days a certain Feri Kökényesdi had won renown as a robber chieftain, and extraordinary, marvellous tales were told in every village and on every puszta6 of him and the twelve robbers who followed his banner, and who were ready at a word to commit the most incredible audacities. People talked of their entrenched fortresses among the Bélabora and Alibuner marshes which were inaccessible to any mortal foe, and in which, even if surrounded on all sides, they could hold out against five regiments till the day of judgment. Then there were tales of storehouses concealed among the Cumanian sand-hills which could only be discovered by the scent of a horse; there were tales of a good steed who, after one watering, could gallop all the way from the Theiss to the Danube, who could recognise a foe two thousand paces off, and would neigh if his master were asleep or fondling his sweetheart in the tavern; there were tales of the gigantic strength of the robber chief who could tackle ten pandurs7 at once, and who, whenever he was pursued, could cause a sea to burst forth between himself and his pursuers, so that they would be compelled to turn back.
As a matter of fact, Mr. Kökényesdi was neither a giant who turned men round his little finger nor a magician who threw dust in their eyes, but an honest-looking, undersized, meagre figure of a man and a citizen of Hodmezö-Vásárhely, in which place he had a house and a couple of farms, on which he conscientiously paid his portion of taxes; and he had bulls and stallions, as to every one of which he was able to prove where he had bought and how much he had paid for it. Not one of them was stolen.
Yet everyone knew very well that neither his farms nor his bulls nor his stallions had been acquired in a godly way, and that the famous robber chief whose rumour filled every corner of the land was none other than he.
But who could prove it? Had anybody ever seen him steal? Had he ever been caught red-handed? Did he not always defend himself in the most brilliant manner whenever he was accused? When there was a rumour that Kökényesdi was plundering the county of Mármaros from end to end, did he not produce five or six eyewitnesses to prove that at that very time he was ploughing and sowing on his farms, and was not the judge at great pains to discover whether these witnesses were reliable?
Those who visited him at his native place of Vásárhely found him to be a respected, worthy, well-to-do man, who tossed his own hay till the very palm of his hand sweated, while those who sought for Kökényesdi on the confines of the realm never saw his face at all; it was indeed a very tiresome business to pursue him. That man was a brave fellow indeed who did not feel his heart beat quicker when he followed his track through the pathless morasses and the crooked sand-hills of the interminable puszta. And if two or three counties united to capture him, he would let himself be chased to the borders of the fourth county, and when he had leaped across it would leisurely dismount and beneath the very eyes of his pursuers, loose his horse to graze and lie down beside it on his bunda8—for there was the Turkish frontier, and he knew very well that beyond Lippa they durst not pursue him, for there the Pasha of Temesvár held sway.
Now, at this time there was among the garrison of Szathmár a captain named Ladislaus Rákóczy. The Rákóczy family, after Helen Zrinyi’s husband had turned papist, for the most part were brought up at Vienna, and many of them held commissions in the Imperial army. Ladislaus Rákóczy likewise became a captain of musketeers, and as the greater part of his company consisted of Hungarian lads, it was not surprising if the Prince of Transylvania, on the other hand, kept German regiments to garrison his towns and accompany him whithersoever he went. It chanced that this Ladislaus Rákóczy,
