the total number of Slovaks who left the territory before December 1938 (voluntarily or forcibly) is unknown and can be estimated only by comparison of the censuses of 1930 and 1938 and the assumed population growth. His estimate has about 50,000 Slovaks. From the start, Hungary breached several points of the agreement on the evacuation and the transfer of territory, particularly its commitment to preventing violence on territory under its administration. Hungarian nationalism considered the Czech and Slovak colonists, who had obtained their lands in the ethnic Hungarian territories by the nationalist Czechoslovak land reform, as aliens. Some of the colonists left before the award, and others stayed where they were, but a number of them were expelled by force and intimidation. Tilkovszky puts the number of expelled families at 647. Deák documents that the expulsion of "colonists" was not realised as an arbitrary act of nationalists but that the Hungarian General Staff gave an order to expel all Slovak and Czech colonists on November 5, 1938, which also included their family members and descendants. On November 11, 1938, the Hungarian General Staff issued a new edict, which imposed measures against colonists, ordered their immediate expulsion and defined them as enemies of the state. The organised persecution of non-Hungarian population was based on those orders. Soldiers and police could freely perform home inspections without needing official authorisation and could confiscate stocks of food, livestock and grain. The term "colonists" covered agricultural colonists but was interpreted by the Hungarian government as any non-Hungarians that had settled in the concerning territories since 1918 for any reason, even for those who declared to have Hungarian nationality. Beside Slovaks, Moravians and Czechs, the forced expulsions affected Germans Forced expulsions were frequently preceded by arrest and imprisonment related to physical torture. In others, it involved transportation to border with Czechoslovakia with military assistance. The colonists were followed by state employees, Slovak farmers (including those who inherited land or bought it in a standard legal way with their own money) and then anybody denoted as an unreliable. Lists of unreliable persons had been prepared by members of the Hungarian United Party before the First Vienna Award. The measures took place violently, with shooting, casualties and the looting of Slovak and Czech stores and property. Military bodies usually did not react to complaints, or they openly declared that they would not do anything against offenders and violence.