at the assembly. Other defenders of Kolozsvár were mutilated. Taking advantage of the victory, the leaders of the noblemen also made attempts to harm their personal enemies. For instance, the voivode who wanted to seize some properties of the Báthorys accused them of having cooperated with the rebels. In retaliation for its support of the rebels, Kolozsvár was deprived of its municipal rights on 15 November. However, the burghers attained the restoration of their liberties with the support of John Hunyadi on 21 September 1444. Contemporaneous letters unanimously described the revolt as a peasant war against their lords. On 22 July 1437, the judge royal, Stephen Báthory, referred to the Transylvanian events as the "peasants' war"; on 30 September, Roland Lépes mentioned that a nobleman had been wounded "in the general fight against the peasantry"; and Bishop Lépes wrote of the "war of the peasants" on 27 January 1439. Other documents (including the records of the meetings of the town council of Nagyenyed) emphasized that craftsmen and townspeople also joined the revolt. No contemporaneous source recorded that national hatreds played any role in the uprising. On the contrary, the cooperation of the Hungarian and Vlach commoners during the rebellion is well-documented. The first compromise between the rebels and the noblemen explicitly mentioned their common grievances. For instance, the rebels complained that "both the Hungarians and the Vlachs who lived near castles" had arbitrarily been compelled to pay the tithes on their swines and bees. Historian Joseph Held states, the "conservative stance of the Transylvanian peasant movement was similar to late medieval peasant movements elsewhere in Europe". The peasants only wanted to secure the abolition of new seigneurial duties and the restoration of the traditional level of their taxes, without calling into question the basic structure of the society. On the other hand, Lajos Demény writes, the movement developed into a "general attack against feudal society" in Transylvania. Both historians conclude that the rebels could not achieve their principal purposes. The peasants' right to free movement was partially restored, but the landowners were again able to reduce it during the last decade of the century. According to historian Jean Sedlar, Vlach peasants "occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder, superior only to slaves" in medieval Transylvania because of their Orthodox faith. However, no merely ethnic prejudice prevented Vlachs from acquiring land and joining the Hungarian noble class, provided they accepted