About the Mahtra War

 

In the year 1858, a wave of peasantry upheavals rolled over Northern Estonia. They were caused by the new peasantry law which did nothing to lighten the corvée burden. The peasants of Mahtra Estate were brave and did not let the Russian punitive troops beat them and make them work again, but they even called the peasants of the neighbourhood for help. The gathered forces of 700-800 men, armed with poles and pitchforks, made the soldiers escape.

The Mahtra War became the symbol of the Estonians’ love of freedom in these days. It grew even more significant in the period of National Awakening on the 2nd half of the 19th century, and especially when the novel “The Mahtra War” by Eduard Vilde was published in 1902.