Galician slaughter The Galician Slaughter , also known as the Peasant Uprising of 1846 or the Szela uprising ( ; or ) , was a two - month uprising of Galician peasants that led to the suppression of the szlachta uprising ( Kraków Uprising ) and the massacre of szlachta in Galicia in the Austrian partition in early 1846 . The uprising , which lasted from February to March , primarily affected the lands around the town of Tarnów . It was a revolt against serfdom , directed against manorial property and oppression ( for example , the manorial prisons ) , with many victims ; Galician peasants killed about 1 , 000 noblemen and destroyed about 500 manors . The Austrian government used the uprising to decimate nationalist Polish nobles , who were organizing an uprising against Austria . It was the largest peasant uprising on Polish lands in the 19th century . It has also been called " the last jacquerie or peasant uprising in European history . " Background . In the semi - autonomous Free City of Kraków , patriotic Polish intellectuals and nobles ( szlachta ) had made plans for a general uprising in partitioned Poland , intending to reestablish an independent Poland . A similar uprising of nobility was planned in Poznań , but police quickly caught the ringleaders . The Kraków Uprising begun on the night of February 20 , and initially met with limited successes . In the meantime , the recent poor harvests resulted in significant unrest among the local peasantry . Uprising . The Kraków uprising was a spark that ignited the peasants ' rebellion . The insurgent nobles made appeals to the peasants , reminding them of the popular hero Tadeusz Kościuszko and promising an end to serfdom . Some peasants indeed sided with the nobles . Narkiewicz and Hahn , among others , note that the peasants around Kraków , many of whom remembered the promises made by Kościuszko and peasant soldiers who fought beside him , were sympathetic to the noble insurgents . Another account is of the peasants in Chochołów , who gathered under a Polish flag and fought the Austrians . Most sources agree that the Austrians encouraged the peasants to revolt . A number of sources point to the actions of the Austrian Tarnów administration , in particular an official identified as the District Officer of Tarnów , Johann Breindl von Wallerstein . Wallerstein reached out to peasant leader Jakub Szela . Serfs were promised the end of their feudal duties if they helped to put down the insurgent Polish noblemen , and were also paid in money and salt for the heads of nobles . Hahn notes " it is generally accepted as proven that the Austrian authorities deliberately exploited peasant dissatisfaction in order to suppress then national uprising . " Magosci et al . write that " most contemporaries condemned the Austrian authorities for their perfidious use of the peasantry for counter - revolutionary aims . " It was ironic , as historian Eric Hobsbawm has noted , that the peasants turned their anger on the revolutionaries , whose ideals also included improvement of peasant situation . The progressive ideals of the Polish insurgents were praised , among others , by Karl Marx , who called it a " deeply democratic movement that aimed at land reform and other pressing social questions . " As noted by several historians , the peasants were not so much acting out of loyalty to the Austrians , as revolting against the oppressive feudal system , of which the Polish nobles were prime representatives and beneficiaries in the Galician region . Wolff takes a different stance here , by noting that it is likely that the Austrian authorities held greater sway with the peasants , who saw improvement in their living conditions in the recent decades , which they associated with the new Austrian rule . Bideleux and Jeffries ( 2007 ) are among the dissenters to that view , citing Alan Sked ' s 1989 research that contends that " the Habsburg authorities - despite later chargers of connivance - knew nothing about what was going on and were appalled at the results of the blood - lust . " Hahn notes that during the events of 1846 " the Austrian bureaucracy played a dubious role that has not been completely explained , down to the present day . " The peasants also aided the Austrian army in defeating the insurgents at the battle of Gdów . Peasants attacked the manor houses of the rebel noble leaders as well as of suspected rebel nobles and killed many hundreds of the estate owners and their families ; about 90 % of the manor houses in the Tarnów region are estimated to have been destroyed . At least 470 manor houses were destroyed . Estimates of the number of lives lost by Polish estate owners and officials range from 1 , 000 to 2 , 000 . Jezierski notes that most of the victims were not nobles ( he estimates those constituted maybe about 200 of the fatalities ) but their direct employees . Most of the victims had no direct involvement with the Polish insurgents other than being a part of the same social class . ( Davies also notes that near Bochnia , Austrian officials were attacked by overzealous peasantry . ) Bideleux and Jeffries discuss the total number of victims noting that " more than two thousands lives were lost on both sides " , which suggests that most of the victims were from among the Polish nobility . The uprising was eventually put down by Austrian troops . Accounts of the pacification vary . Bideleux and Jeffries note it was " brutally put down by the Austrian troops . " Jezierski notes the use of flagellation by the authorities . Nance describes the arrest and exile of the anti - Austrian peasants in Chochołów . Magocsi et al . note that the peasants were punished by being forced to resume their feudal obligations , while their leader , Szela , received a medal and a land grant . Legacy . Serfdom existed in Galicia until 1848 , and the unrest of 1846 is credited with helping to bring on its demise . The destruction of crops during the hostilities was one of the reasons for the ensuing famine . For the Polish nobles and reformers , this event was a lesson that class lines are a powerful force , and that peasants cannot be expected to support a cause of independent Poland without education and indoctrination . Soon after the uprising was put down , the Republic of Cracow was abolished and incorporated into Galicia . The massacre of the gentry in 1846 was the historical memory that haunted Stanisław Wyspiański ' s play " The Wedding " . The uprising was also described in the stories " Der Kreipshysikus " and " Jakob Szela " by Marie von Ebner - Eschenbach . Notes . a The nationality of the peasants is a complex issue . A number of sources describe them as Polish . Hahn notes that the peasants in the region affected by the uprising were not Ruthenian , but rather " Polish speaking Catholics . " Others , however , note that the peasants had little national identity and considered themselves Masurians ; to quote one of the peasants as late as end of World War I : " The older peasants called themselves Masurians , and their speech Masurian . . . I myself did not know that I was a Pole till I began to read books and papers , and I fancy that other villagers came to be aware of the national attachment in much the same way . " In turn Wolff prefers to talk of " Galician peasants " . b This is , however , disputable , considering for example the 1907 Romanian Peasants ' Revolt , the 1914 Peasant Revolt in Albania or the 1920 Tambov Rebellion in the USSR .