Estate raids in Vilnius district in the mid-18th century (statistics, social composition of the raiders, degree of violence)

Abstract

The article analyses a specific kind of crime committed by the nobility of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, i. e. the raids on estates, in Vilnius District (administrative district in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine). The article covers the period of the mid-18th century when the country was ruled by Augustus III (1734–1763). Attacks were well organized, armed, and violent seizures of other people’s possessions; they were organized on a large scale. According to the legal norms of that period, these raids could have been legal, having the approval of the law court, and illegal. The latter, however, were the most frequent ones; we did not come across any legal attacks. Raids were one of the most widely spread crimes in rural territories and the most frequent crime against a person and his/her property in the period under analysis. All in all, 288 cases dealing with this crime during the above-mentioned period were found. Frequency tendencies of these attacks are directly related to the general tendencies of crime rate. The boom of this kind of crime could be dated by the 5th decade of the 18th century when, on average, more than 13 attacks occurred every year; later, their number decreased. The raids usually took place in summer, at day-time; however, there were some other cases as well. The group of raiders, as a rule, consisted of a landlord, his family members, and land administrators with their subjects – household servants and peasants. Peasants and other unprivileged subjects participated in almost all attacks. Though acts of violence were abundant, homicide cases were not numerous. For example, we discovered only seven murder cases; some deaths occurred after attacks, and some women miscarried because of the acts of violence. Violence was committed against people of all social layers, and imprisonment or rapes could be defined as concrete cases of the expression of this violence.[...]Humanitarinių mokslų fakultetasVytauto Didžiojo universiteta