agreement on 6 October which increased the rent payable by the peasants to the landowners. Shortly thereafter, the peasants invaded the Kolozsmonostor Abbey and took possession of Kolozsvár and Nagyenyed (Aiud). The united armies of the voivode of Transylvania, the counts of the Székelys and the Saxon seats forced the rebels to surrender in January 1438. The leaders of the revolt were executed and other rioters were mutilated at the assembly of the representatives of the Three Nations of Transylvania in February. Background Transylvania ("the Land beyond the Forests") was a geographic region in the 15th-century Kingdom of Hungary. Four major ethnic groups – the Hungarians, Saxons, Székelys, and Vlachs (Romanians) – inhabited the territory. The Hungarians, the Hungarian-speaking Székelys, and the Saxons formed sedentary communities, living in villages and towns. Many of the Vlachs were shepherds, herding their flocks between the mountains and the lowlands, but the monarchs and other landowners granted them fiscal privileges to advance their settlement in arable lands from the second half of the century. The Vlachs initially enjoyed a special status, which included that they were to pay tax only on their sheep, but Vlach commoners who settled in royal or private estates quickly lost their liberties. For administrative purposes, Transylvania was divided into counties and seats. The seven Transylvanian counties were subjected to the authority of a high-ranking royal official, the voivode of Transylvania. The seats were the administrative units of the autonomous Saxon and Székely communities. The voivodes presided over the noblemen's general assemblies, which were annually held at a meadow near Torda (Turda). From the early 15th century, the voivodes rarely visited Transylvania, leaving the administration of the counties to their deputies, the vice-voivodes. The Transylvanian noblemen were exempted from taxation in 1324. Noblemen were granted the right to administer justice to the peasants living in their estates in 1342. The prelates acquired the same right in their domains in the second half of the 14th century. In 1366, Louis I of Hungary decreed that an oath taken by a Vlach knez (or chieftain) who "had been brought" to his estate by royal writ was equal to a true nobleman's oath, but other knezes were on a footing of equality with the heads of villages. The legal position of the knezes was similar to the "nobles of the Church" and other groups of conditional nobles, but the monarchs frequently rewarded them