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churches or separate buildings with one or more towers within a village (or suitable nearby
location), the tabor offered peasants a relative secure shelter from the Turkish raiders, who
were not equipped for lengthier forays or sieges. The peasants also used underground caves
with secured entrances as shelters, as well as fortified tabori. Some tabori, such as Diex
(Djekše) in Carinthia, Dolnja Košana in inner Carniola and Mozelj near
Kočevje grew into
larger defensive complexes intended for inhabitants from several villages, and could protect
up to 2,000 people.
The endless and varied forms of soldiering imposed on the peasants gave them more
than enough reasons for dissatisfaction. The continual increase in the burden upon them and
the simultaneous deterioration in their economic position led to reductions in their rights.
Material poverty was not only caused by peasants being forced into more and more
demanding military undertakings, but was also the fault of their immediate feudal lords, who
were starting to become involved in bonded labourers’ economic activities and to change
previous forms of dues. Carinthia was further affected by the revived trade between southern
Germany and Italy. The lack of protection for rural areas against Turkish incursions led
Carinthian peasants to unite, following patterns of rebellion elsewhere in the eastern Alps (in
Salzburg and Styria). In 1473 and 1476, united in a peasant league, they warned the Estates
that they would no longer pay urbarial dues, unless they received protection from the Turkish
attackers. The sense of injustice felt at the nominal conversion in monetary dues from
Aquileian monetary value into Viennese on the Ortenburg seigneury near Spittal finally
provoked peasants into open rebellion. The rebellion spread from the Drava valley,
particularly east and northeast of Villach, in spring 1478 throughout the Slovene-populated
areas of Carinthia, as well as the German part of the Tanzenberg and Ostrovica seigneuries.
The peasants, joined by some miners and rural artisans, and even enjoying support from some
burghers in Villach and blacksmiths in Huttenberg, began to refuse to pay duties to their
feudal lords. They started to collect the duties themselves for the purposes of the peasant
league, appointing their own judges and priests, and demanding the right to decide on
territorial taxes. However, such self-confidence exceeding the possibilities offered by the
social structure of the time. The emperor forbade the “unprecedented collection” by peasants
and ordered the rebellion put down, but in summer the Turks attacked again, before the noble
army could make its move. At Coccau (Kokovo) on the Gailitz, the Turks smashed a 600-
strong rebel army, and three weeks later they plundered areas where the peasant movement
was strongest. Once the Turks left, the feudal lords were left with a simple task of hunting
down and punishing the rebel leaders.
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Peasant rebellions did not die down in Inner Austria, or in the German empire in
general. In the following centuries of the early modern era, 70 to 80% of peasants in Slovene
territory – as elsewhere in the empire – were continuously living close to bare subsistence
level, since, despite an increase in non-agrarian activities, the simultaneous increase in service
obligations meant they remained in poverty. When peasants also had to face poor harvests,
contagious diseases and military action, their tolerance was soon exhausted. At that point, the
bonded peasants appealed to the “old law” (stara pravda, alte Recht), not only calling for the
application of the “fixed levies” written in the urbarial record, but also to retain their
established rights of participation in rural trade. Over the next three centuries, around 170
localised disputes and uprisings took place in Slovene-populated areas, and approximately
every two or three generations a major peasant uprising broke out, enflaming a whole region
or even several Länder, or provinces, at once.
SETTLEMENT PATTERNS AT THE END OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
A great deal of arable land was laid waste and abandoned throughout Slovene territory
at this time. The worst affected areas were those exposed to Turkish attacks. In the Posavje
region, around Brežice and Sevnica, around 34% of farms were abandoned, around 30% in
the Ptuj seigneury, around 45% in the Ormož seigneury, and around 30% in the seigneuries of
Duino (Devin), Senožeče, Prem and Vipava. In 1498 in the Postojna seigneury, 136 of the
total of 359 farms were uncultivated, while in the Gradac seigneury in White Carniola (Bela
Krajina), the number of peasant landowners fell from 170 to 106 in just four years during the
1520s. The Kostel seigneury presents an even more extreme example: in 1527, it had 300
occupied farms, but in 1528 that was down to just 7. The typical proportion of abandoned
land in the interior of the Slovene-populated Länder was 22%, but along the periphery of
Styria and Carniola (on their eastern and southern boundaries) and in Istria (along its northern
boundaries), there was a wide belt of largely abandoned lands, covering 40 to 60% of the
total. The huge demographic losses in these areas were passionately, and sometimes
exaggeratingly, ascribed by contemporaries to the Turks leading people off into captivity or
carrying out heartless massacres. Yet the abandonment of the peripheral lands, which in some
places were able to recover from the armed pillaging relatively quickly and without outside
help, was also due to a concentration of the population in the interior, away from those places
under greater threat. This was aided by imperial orders in the 1570s, giving bonded peasants
permission to settle in the newly created towns in Carniola, and in other economically