had no support for their ecclesiastical institutions. Moreover, they paid high taxes to their feudal nobles, who were mostly Hungarian Catholics, as well as to the Emperor. Probably because he was literate, Horea became the spokesman for the Romanian peasants, traveling to Vienna on four occasions between 1779 and 1784 to present their grievances in personal audiences with Emperor Joseph II. On his first journey to Vienna he was accompanied by Dumitru Todea and Cloșca, and, according to one source, Gavrilă, who is identified as his brother. On his second excursion to Vienna, in 1780, he was accompanied only by Cloșca; it was on this occasion that the Emperor is said to have ordered him to investigate the motives behind the Hungarians’ mistreatment of the Serbs and, particularly, the Romanians. His third trip was in 1782; his final Vienna sojourn, in 1783, lasted a year. The fact that a serf was received by the Emperor himself suggests that Horea had supporters at court. One source suggests that his sponsor at court was the Austrian geologist Ignatius Born, who had estates in Alba on which Horea worked, and that Horea, when in Vienna, stayed at Born’s home. It is known that Joseph II was, at this time, in conflict with the nobility in Transylvania, because he wished to bring an end to the feudal system and wanted Romanian serfs to be able to join his army, something the nobles forbade because it would deprive them of free labor. Horea is said to have told his fellow Romanian serfs that the Emperor had authorized him to encourage them to wipe out the Hungarian nobility of Transylvania. In any event, during the period when Horea represented them, the Romanian peasants’ situation worsened – their working hours were increased and their right to exploit the forests was taken from them. On January 31, 1784, Joseph ordered an increase in the number of border guards in Transylvania, and peasants from around the region, including many from Romania, traveled to Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár, Karlsburg) to enroll in the army and thus escape the exploitative feudal system. When the Romanian serfs got the impression that officials in Karlsburg were resisting their efforts to enroll, a feeling of having been betrayed spread among them. Rebellion On October 28, 1784, under a bridge at the weekly fair in Brad (Brád, Tannenhof), Crișan met with peasants from villages in the