A MODERN HIGHWAYMAN

Evening Star, Issue 12699, 27 June 1907, Page 5

A MODERN HIGHWAYMAN

Joszi Savanyu, the last of the famous Hungarian highwaymen of the seventies an-1 eighties, committed suicide on April 15 by shooting himself. Savanyu was the nineteenth century Robin Hood of Hungary. He was born in. 1845, and brought up as a shepherd, but took to a lawless life, and made the Bakonyi Forest, in North-eastern Hungary (not a hundred miles from Vienna), the centre of hie operations. Her* he waylaid and robbed travellers, and sometimes tortured his prisoners till a ransom was forthcoming. With his blinds of followers ho made raids oa the castles and small towns of two neighboring counties, and often returned to nis. forest fastnesses with rich spoil. He owed his long immunity from capture to his popularity with the peasants of the neighborhood, for ho never robbed the poor, but distributed part of his spoil among thoso in distress. The peasants assisted him to evade the soldiera and police, and his exploits were celebrated in songs which made him a hero. In 1834 he was captured when asleepj and condemned to lifelong penal servitude. His conduct in prison was exemplary, and : last year, after twenty-two years' confinement, the.Emperor granted him a pardon at the intercession of a bishop. Savanyu decided to make his living by travelling with a showman, but the privations of tile long imprisonment had completely broken down his health, and he soon, had to give up this occupation, and went to live with an invalid sister in his native place. He was tortured by a. painful malady, and finally, having written on a slip of paper, " I can bear Qua no longer," comanttea-snicada.