THE ROUMANIAN DISORDERS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2150, 5 August 1907, Page 4

THE ROUMANIAN DISORDERS.

A FARMER’S TERRIBLE VENGEANCE. v A terrible act of savagery is roportod, says Router’s Bukliarest correspondent, to have occurred in the village of Viashu, in the district of Mehedintz, during the recent revolts. This villago has a small population of about 160 families, wlio are all fairly well-to-do. During the time of agitation the inhabitants wore quiet, but one day a band of recruit 8 returning with a few peasants from a fair created a disturbance, and finished up by setting fire to three maize granaries belonging to a farmer named Vintilescu. Three days later a platoon of infantry arrived in the village, and, seeing the burnt granaries, asked tho farmer if there was any agitation among the peasants. The farmer replied that there was no agitation, but that the peasants of the village had set lire to tho granaries, and 'ho presented to tho officer in command a list of men who,-ho alleged, had been tho ringleaders. Tho officer then went from house to liauso, and invited the peasants to come to the administrative office, as ho wished to communicate to them the new Government’s intentions, as woll as to thank them for the order preserved in the village. Some twenty to twenty-five peasants went. Seventeen of these men, among them an old man of eighty named lon Constantinescu, who had been in his younger days Professor, Judge, Councillor, and Mayor, were thereupon charged with having set fire to the granaries. They were condemned to death, ranged in a row, and shot dead then and there by the troops. The officer who commanded, not being satisfied that all were dead,_ afterwards fired a * bullet into the head of every one. The next day eight more peasants were shot in a pit at the other end of the village. Another was brought out of the hospital in a dying condition, being denounced by the farmer Vintilescu as a rioter, and shot dead by the soldiers.

A son of tho old man Constantinsscu, an engineer of the local railways, whose brother was killed at the same time as his aged father, has arrived at Bukliarest to claim justice. The affair lias caused a painful sensation in the capital.