There was no Mongol ring about this, as there had been about similar previous proclamations, and it was given in the King's name, it was signed with the King's own seal! Of that there could be no question.
The news spread rapidly, further flight was stopped, and in a few days the people dutifully began to venture forth from their hiding places, and that in such numbers that a great part of the country was re-populated. Moreover, the Mongols, though still in possession, actually welcomed them as friends, which showed that the King knew what he was about! They were allowed, moreover, to choose magistrates for themselves from among the Mongol chiefs, to the number of a hundred, who met once a week to administer strict and impartial justice.
Magyar, Kun, Mongol, Tartar, Russian, and the rest all lived as amicably together as if they were one family. Farming operations were resumed, markets were held, and peace of a sort seemed to have returned to the land.
At last harvest and vintage were over. Corn and fruit of all descriptions had been garnered, and there was wine in the cellars. And then? Why, then, late in the autumn, the too confiding people were massacred wholesale; and those of them who managed to escape fled back to their hiding-places.
Then followed winter, such a winter as had not often been matched in severity. The Danube, frozen hard, offered an easy passage; there was no European army to oppose them, for the heads of Christendom were fighting among themselves, and the Mongols crossed over to do on the right bank of the river what they had already done on the left.
Always rather savage than courageous, the Mongols obliged their prisoners to storm the towns, looked on laughing as they fell; cut them down themselves from behind if they were not sufficiently energetic, and drove them forward with threats and blows. When the besieged were thoroughly exhausted, and the trenches filled with corpses, then, and not till then, the Mongols made the final assault, or enticed the inhabitants to surrender, and then, with utter disregard of the fair promises they had made, put them to death with inhuman tortures. The Mongols were exceeding "slim," as people have learnt to say in these days. One example of their savagery will suffice.