Galician peasant uprising of 1846
| Galician peasant uprising of 1846 | ||||||||
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Galician Slaughter by Jan Lewicki (1795–1871) depicts Austrian officers paying salt and cash to peasants delivering the severed heads of Polish noblemen. While this never actually happened, the picture illustrates the myth prevalent among the Polish elite. | ||||||||
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| Belligerents | ||||||||
| Galician peasants | Galician szlachta | Imperial Austrian Army | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | ||||||||
| Jakub Szela | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | ||||||||
| Estimated more than 2,000 killed, including 200—2,000 nobles and officials | ||||||||
| History of Poland |
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Timeline of Polish history |
The Galician peasant uprising of 1846, also known as the Galician Rabacja, Galician Slaughter, or the Szela Uprising (German: Galizischer Bauernaufstand; Polish: Rzeź galicyjska or Rabacja galicyjska), was a two-month uprising of impoverished Austrian Galician[a] peasants that led to the suppression of the szlachta (nobility) uprising (Kraków Uprising, it was an uprising of Poles against Austrian rule) and the massacre of szlachta in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, in the Austrian Partition zone, in early 1846. The uprising, which lasted from February to March, primarily affected the lands around the town of Tarnów.
A revolt against serfdom, it was directed against manorial property and oppression (such as the manorial prisons). By some estimates, Galician peasants killed about 1,000 nobles and destroyed about 500 manors. The Austrian government used the uprising to decimate Polish nobles, who were organising an uprising against Austria.