Baltic Journal of Health and Physical Activity

Volume 13
Issue 6 Special Issue: Sport and Tourism.
Yesterday - Today - Tomorrow. Vol. 2. Editors Article 19
Dariusz Jacek Olszewski-Strzyżowski and Sorin
Buhaş

2021

The dangers of travel – Banditry on the roads in the old days

Piotr Godlewski
Gdansk University of Physical Education and Sport, Gdansk, Poland, [Link]@[Link]

Dariusz T. Skalski
State Higher Vocational School in Walcz, Poland, [Link]@[Link]

Robert Mruczyk
Marshal Jozef Pilsudski Higher School of Safety and Security Services in Warsaw, Poland,
[Link]@[Link]

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Godlewski P, Skalski DT, Mruczyk R. The dangers of travel ‒ Banditry on the roads in the old days. Balt J
Health Phys Act. 2021;13([Link].1):195-214. doi: 10.29359/[Link].Iss1.19

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The dangers of travel – Banditry on the roads in the old days

Abstract
Background: Both in the most distant history and nowadays, travel is accompanied by danger. Nowadays,
insecurity is becoming a basic barrier to tourist travel to high-risk areas. The aim of the study was to
make a comparative review related to the subject of travel danger in retrospective terms. Material and
methods: In a scholarly review, the authors mainly used the historical method, the method of establishing
historical facts, the comparative method. The method of analysis and criticism of literature was also
used. Results: Travel safety is not a common topic of historical literature on tourism. Although we have
many fragmentary accounts in the diary literature, in Polish historiography there are no scholarly
monographic works and articles that put the subject of travel safety in a historical context. Conclusions:
Travel has always been accompanied by danger. Nowadays, insecurity is becoming a basic barrier to
tourist travel to high-risk areas. Threats on the road are of a difficult nature to predict, from the dangers
caused by the forces of nature to the deadly threat resulting from human actions, most often with an
intent to rob, but also against a political (terrorism), religious or national background. Despite the ongoing
civilizational changes, including the extraordinary dynamics of cultural changes, the dangers of travel still
show an analogy to the former days. The end of the nineteenth century was a borderline period, it marked
the irretrievable end of primitive road banditry. The development of safe communication, the emergence
of strong state bodies in Europe with a developed system of security apparatus effectively limited and
then eliminated the epicentres of high-risk areas, which does not mean the complete elimination of road
banditry. Also today, information about attacks on tourists is coming from some regions of Europe, the
mechanisms and methods are confusingly similar to those known from history.

Keywords
history of tourism, culture tourism, danger of travelling

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vol13/iss6/19
Baltic Journal of Health and Physical Activity
2021; Special Issue 1: Sport and Tourism. Yesterday - Today - Tomorrow. Vol. 2
Eds. DJ. Olszewski-Strzyżowski and S. Buhaş
Journal of Gdansk University of Physical Education and Sport
e-ISSN 2080-9999 ORIGINAL

doi: 10.29359/[Link].Iss1.19

The dangers of travel ‒

Banditry on the roads in the old days
Authors’ Contribution: Piotr Godlewski1 ABCDEF , Dariusz T. Skalski2 ABCDEF, Robert Mruczyk3 ABCDEF
A Study Design
B Data Collection
C Statistical Analysis
1
Gdansk University of Physical Education and Sport, Gdansk, Poland
D Data Interpretation
E Manuscript Preparation 2
State Higher Vocational School in Walcz, Poland
F Literature Search
G Funds Collection 3
Marshal Jozef Pilsudski Higher School of Safety and Security Services in Warsaw,
Poland

abstract
Background: ‪Both in the most distant history and nowadays, travel is accompanied by danger. Nowadays, insecurity
is becoming a basic barrier to tourist travel to high-risk areas. The aim of the study was to make
a comparative review related to the subject of travel danger in retrospective terms.

Material and methods: In a scholarly review, the authors mainly used the historical method, the method of establishing historical
facts, the comparative method. The method of analysis and criticism of literature was also used.

Results: ‪Travel safety is not a common topic of historical literature on tourism. Although we have many
fragmentary accounts in the diary literature, in Polish historiography there are no scholarly monographic
works and articles that put the subject of travel safety in a historical context.

Conclusions: ‪Travel has always been accompanied by danger. Nowadays, insecurity is becoming a basic barrier
to tourist travel to high-risk areas. Threats on the road are of a difficult nature to predict, from the
dangers caused by the forces of nature to the deadly threat resulting from human actions, most often
with an intent to rob, but also against a political (terrorism), religious or national background. Despite
the ongoing civilizational changes, including the extraordinary dynamics of cultural changes, the
dangers of travel still show an analogy to the former days. The end of the nineteenth century was
a borderline period, it marked the irretrievable end of primitive road banditry. The development of safe
communication, the emergence of strong state bodies in Europe with a developed system of security
apparatus effectively limited and then eliminated the epicentres of high-risk areas, which does not
mean the complete elimination of road banditry. Also today, information about attacks on tourists is
coming from some regions of Europe, the mechanisms and methods are confusingly similar to those
known from history.

Key words: history of tourism, culture tourism, danger of travelling.

article details
Article statistics: Word count: 11,625; Tables: 0; Figures: 0; References: 42
Received: June 2021; Accepted: October 2021; Published: November 2021
Full-text PDF: [Link]
Copyright © Gdansk University of Physical Education and Sport, Poland
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Funding: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Conflict of interests: Authors have declared that no competing interest exists.
Corresponding author: Piotr Godlewski; Gdansk University of Physical Education and Sport; email: [Link]@[Link]
Open Access License: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No-
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otherwise in compliance with the license.

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introduction 
According to the German sociologist H. J. Knebel, author of perhaps the first sociological book
on tourism, a tourist is: “a person travelling during a holiday, for leisure and pleasure”. He
defines tourism as “the pressure of mobility”, the existence or absence of social relations with
the locals, “satisfying the need for luxury through means obtained in the place of permanent
residence” and “striving for comfort and physical security” [1:6]. One of old guidebooks
suggesting advantageous travelling, De arte Peregrinandi, reads: “travel is the difficulty
of seeing and exploring foreign lands, and this effort will not suit just anyone” [2:138].

Since the dawn of time, one of the fundamental barriers to travel has been the fear of
leaving a well-known, “tame” place of life and ventilating into a foreign space, most often
perceived as hostile and dangerous [3:139].

Despite the dangers of travel for thousands of years, almost since the dawn of human
civilization, some atavistic and archetypal force of new knowledge, beyond the conditions of
being, has prompted people to change their place of residence, to move, to wander around
the world [4]. Travellers, who will later be called tourists, choose the safest possible roads,
more willingly where there were hospitable, friendly parties and good people. Routes leading
among dangerous and sinister areas were reluctantly chosen. And it seems that the danger
of travel in the twenty-first and subsequent centuries will still accompany tourist travellers,
because the world is shaken by various dramatic events that limit carefree travel. And the
spectre of further pandemics can limit this movement to a minimum [5:9].

In the Middle Ages, millions of pilgrims, tourist travellers, merchants, soldiers, students,
vagabonds, etc. travelled throughout Western Europe along a miserable and dangerous
road network. They often suffered from the inconveniences of travel, hunger and thirst,
endured cold and heat, the malice of carriers, the dishonesty of guides, and the deception
of innkeepers. They were exposed to the dangers of travel, loss of life and limbs. In the
Middle Ages, it was mainly merchants and pilgrims that travelled. The purpose of the
peregrination were mostly places of religious worship, as well as famous colleges –
universities of Italy, universities in Padua and Bologna. Travelling tourists visited Rome
or Santiago de Compostela, Aachen, Canterbury or Einsiedeln. Many continued on their
long journey to Jerusalem. Since the sixteenth century, a high dynamics of travel has been
observed in Europe. The travel movement included the youth of France, Spain and Italy.
For educational purposes, young German aristocrats were sent, and soon they were joined
by sons of Danish and Swedish nobility.

However, a typical tourist trip appeared only in the sixteenth century. At that time, it
became fashionable for rich people, mainly aristocracy, to send young people on a journey
through Western Europe. The main motive of these trips was to get to know the culture
of the developed countries of Europe, often to undertake university studies. Around 1667,
educational journeys held in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were referred to as
the Grand Tour. Like the entire everyday life of the inhabitants of Europe, travel since the
times of the Grand Tour has undergone a continuous evolution in accordance with the
rhythm of civilizational development. In particular, Christianity became the driving force
for prototourism. Religious ideology, mysticism, simple curiosity have caused that from
the early Middle Ages to the present day, these motifs have catalysed the trend of travel to
places of religious worship.

Crime and the standard of socio-economic living have always had a feedback loop. And
so, the overall crime rate increased in the sixteenth century, and then decreased after the
mid-sixteenth century. The reason may have been the harvest in the last decades of the
sixteenth century, as well as slower population growth and greater availability of work.

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A sharp increase in robberies usually occurred after a poor harvest, or after the end of
the war, when demobilized soldiers returned home, and the roads were full of armed and
organized in bands of stragglers. Sometimes it was during wars that crime declines were
observed.

Both in the Middle Ages and the following sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, theft and
violence were the main manifestations of crime. Travellers were usually robbed of small
sums of money or goods, such as food. Violent and life-threatening crimes against travellers
were a minority of cases. When, as a result of the spread of literacy, the availability of
printed information about crimes increased, and often exaggerated their number for populist
sensationalism, the public became mistaken about the increase in crime. In the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries and at the beginning of the twentieth century, crime declined, as
it did after 1850 [6].

In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, Europe formed a comprehensive territory, the borders
of which did not constitute a barrier to the movement of travellers. The barrier was the
hardships of travel and the risks lurking on the roads. It must be remembered, however,
that people in ancient times were accustomed to uncertainty, because in turbulent times
it was impossible to avoid dangers. Danger was, therefore, an inseparable companion of
everyday life on the journey. Most often they wandered on foot, often also on horseback. To
carry large luggage, pack animals were used. Between the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
the common use of the horse collar and horseshoe began, the carts already had four wheels,
which allowed them to carry a greater weight [7:117].

material and methods

The safety of travel has not become a particularly emphasized topic of historical tourist
literature, both in the past and in the present. Although we have many fragmentary
accounts in the diary literature, there are no scholarly monographs in Polish historiography
that would capture the safety of travel in the historical context. It seems that in the twenty-
first century, in view of global terrorism, learning about the dangers of travel in ancient
times can serve the modern reception.

Although the problem of the danger of travel, and later of tourist travel, is an interesting
issue, for a long time it did not have adequate historiography or studies of contemporary
problems related to it. As Andrzej Stasiak writes, the researchers primarily focused on
the positive aspects of tourism development and the resulting economic, social, cultural
benefits, etc. and even that only with time, in the 1990s [5]. In the twentieth century, other
negative phenomena occurring in tourist reception areas began to be studied, including
inter alia the impact of crime, wars and terrorism on the tourism sector [8:16], [10:416–
456]. It seems that the catalyst for more intensive scholarly literature in this area could
be the global events related to the terrorist attack of 11 September, 2001 in the USA, as
well as the tragic attacks of Al-Qaeda in various parts of the world. The development of
the Islamic State (ISIS) and, consequently, the launch of a global war on terrorism has
become the cause of greater interest of scientists in the problem of the impact of the
terrorist threat on the development of tourism.

From the point of view of the presented paper, it is more important to determine the
state of the literature on the issue of travel safety in a retrospective context. Already at
the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was literature about bandits and robbers.
Among the published books, which at that time had a literary character, although not
devoid of extensive factography, one should mention the biography of Rob Roy by Walter
Scott (1818).

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Scott, author of historical novels, carefully reconstructs the era and its scenery in order
to place his hero and eighteenth-century Scotland and England against the background
of socio-political conflicts and the economic situation. Another novel by Scott containing
criminal motifs was the book Ivanhoe published in 1820 (Polish edition 1821). It was
another historical novel by Walter Scott. The action of this novel takes place in twelfth-
century England. Its main character is an Anglo-Saxon knight Wilfred of Ivanhoe, and the
action takes place in the times of Norman-dominated England in the vicinity of southern
Yorkshire and northern Nottinghamshire. One of the main characters of the book was the
legendary outlaw, Locksley – Robin Hood, the leader of a forest gang.

In 1824, The Newgate Calendar was published by Andrew Knapp and William Baldwin.
Originally, it was a monthly newsletter about executions, containing biographical notes
of notorious criminals such as Sawney Bean, Dick Turpin, John Wilkes or Moll Cutpurse.
Collective editions of these texts began to appear in the mid-eighteenth century, and in
1774 a five-volume edition became the standard. The Newgate Calendar is a strange and
gruesomely detailed mix of fact and sensational fiction [10]. In the 1830s, there was a great
demand for cheap fiction for the intelligentsia and also for the proletariat. It should be
noted that literacy was becoming popular among workers. In England, by 1830, as many
as three-quarters of workers had learned to read. Edward Lloyd was a pioneer of cheap
sensational popular literature. His Penny Bloods was a great success, especially among
the working class. From 1835 he published such titles as Lives of the Most Notorious
Highwaymen, Paws, and History of the Pirates of All Nations.

The subject of robberies was also a material for artists and poets. The theme of bandits
in Spain attacking travellers on the routes was a motif in the work of Francisco José de
Goya. An example is the depiction of a bloody attack on a stagecoach (Asalto al coche from
1787 and Asalto de ladrones from 1793–1794), as well as a series of paintings depicting
the Franciscan Pedro de Zaldivia disarming the bandit El Maragato (dated 1806–1807).
Unusual in its dramaturgy and mood is also attributed to Goya cycle “bandit attack” (Asalto
de bandidos) dating back to the years 1808–1812. In it, the artist depicts drastic scenes
of looting, rape and murder, as well as being shot by hostage bandits.

The aim of this study is to make a comparative review related to the subject of travel danger
in retrospective terms. The work has the character of scholarly reconnaissance and touches
on selected historical threads related to banditry on the roads in the old days. In their
scholarly analysis, the authors mainly used the historical method as well as the method of
estab-lishing historical facts through induction and deduction. In the development of the
historical narrative, a comparative method was used. In addition, the method of analysis
and criticism of literature was used to present various concepts of presenting the history
of banditry on the roads in retrospective terms in the literature on the subject.

1 . travel dangers ‒ robbery , robbery , robbery

In ancient times, it was it was the Balkan Peninsula, the Rhineland, Dalmatia and Spain
that were particularly dangerous. A high intensity of attacks was recorded especially in
Asia Minor [11]. From this period come the tombstones of Roman travellers who died as a
result of a bandit attack. The Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse, climbing to the altitude of
2,504 m above sea level in a place called Hochtor was a frequented route already in Roman
times. In the Middle Ages, it was overrun by gangs of villains and robbers who robbed in
the summer and hid in the higher parts of the mountains in the winter. Already in the time
of Charlemagne, the Alps were an excellent hiding place for all sorts of villains. In 886,
a clergyman-robber from the town of St. Moritz with an armed detachment blocked the
road between the Jura and the St. Bernardine Pass, preventing the march of Lothar’s

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troops. In antiquity and in the early Middle Ages, people travelled almost exclusively during
the day, trying to gather in clusters for safety. However, the joint journey with strangers
was risky, as it might turn out that among the wanderers there were various shady-looking
individuals of the wrong sort. In the 12th–13th centuries, maps were hardly ever used, and
those that were showed the area in a very simplified way. Travellers also often wandered,
deviated from the road, wandering around the area for hours and then returning to the
same place. Already in antiquity, the real scourge of travellers were customs offi-ers. In
the times to come this vicious profession spread horrendously.

Not only were there a wealth of common villains, but on the roads of medieval Europe
there were also knights-robbers called raubritter. Among the demoralized knights, many
were of noble birth, with a strongly developed sense of belonging to Christianity, but
this did not prevent them from looting and robberies on the tracts. All this was within
the mental and social directive of the law of the strongest. After all, in feudal times, the
armed acquisition of goods by force was something normal. S. Milewski draws attention
to this matter, quoting N. Elias: “the overwhelming majority of the members of the secular
upper class in the Middle Ages had the lives of gang leaders. They were characterised
by the customs and preferences proper to the rogue ring leaders” [12:48]. Knights often
came from old-established families; they permanently stayed in castles, despised any
labour, especially in the field, and their profession became rob-bery, attacks on merchants
and travellers passing near their castle. A special plague of raubritters was observed in
Germany, where the number of knights-robbers was very significant. Groups of raubritters
organised themselves into gangs, with the greatest intensity of this practice found in the
mountainous areas of Bavaria, Tyrol, Italy, Scotland, and in Poland in Silesia.

In the twelfth century, knights showed up, recruiting mainly from the plebs, in the poorest
and most densely populated lands of Western Europe, such as: Wales, Braband, Flanders,
Aragon, Navarre. These itinerant soldiers, also called routiers1 or cottereaux, organised
themselves in gangs that were difficult to defeat. The routiers were particularly dangerous
in times of peace, when they were left without pay and engaged in outright robbery. When
their activities paralysed trade and the movement of travellers, round-ups involving large
military forces were organized on them. The apprehended were treated cruelly. Richard
the Lionheart ordered in 1182 to kill half of the disarmed gang of Brabants, and the rest
to be released earlier, ordering their eyes to be gouged out [13:362–363].

In France, in the time of Philip Augustus, degenerate knights became a real scourge.
A. Luchaire, an historian who studies the daily life of thirteenth-century France, writes
of one of them: “His life descends on plunder, on the plundering of churches, on attacks
on pilgrims, on the oppression of widows and orphans. He finds a special delight in the
mutilation of the inno-cent” [14:275]. It seems that robbery was at that time a phenomenon
typical of the entire layer of chivalry, with the possible exception of the narrow elite. This
phenomenon was typical of the whole of Europe also in later centuries.

The fodder for banditry in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was the endless time
of wars, riots and tumults. According to A. Huizing, “War that was becoming a chronic
phenomenon, the constant anxiety that various dangerous gangs stirring up in the cities
and throughout the country, the eternal threat of hard and uncertain justice ... [all these
were] the fodder medium on which the sense of general uncertainty grew” [15:51].

1 They were mercenary soldiers of the Middle Ages. Their special distinction from other paid soldiers of the time was that they were organised
in bands (routes). The term was first used in the twelfth century, but it is particular-ly associated with the free companies that terrorised
the French countryside during the Hundred Years’ War. Many different terms were used to describe these soldiers, some geographical (e.g.
Brabançons of Brabant, Ar-agones of Aragon, Bascoli of the Basque Country) and other nicknames (e.g. cotereaux or cotereli, perhaps from
the knife they were carrying). The background of their plunder was the Hundred Years’ War, which lasted from 1337 to 1453.

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In the sixteenth century, the roads and forests of all Europe were full of wandering
suspicious characters. The aforementioned state of war resulted in the relaxation of the
central authority, an excess of the army with a plague of stragglers and deserters. There
were years when travelling even a short distance required a lot of desperation. Robert
Ascham, a Cambridge scholar who travelled around the Netherlands and Germany in the
mid-sixteenth century, notes that near Cologne and Aachen, the forests were full of well-
armed villains [16:186].

In the seventeenth century, there were many dangerous places in Europe. A. Mączak
writes that frequent robberies of travellers took place within a wide strip along the
shores of the Mediterranean, starting from Catalonia to the Ligurian Gulf, Calabria,
Campania, the Adriatic coast, then Lorraine, the mountainous and forested lands of central
Germany, especially Spessart, where due to the poverty prevailing in that area, packs of
robbers formed. Areas of particular risk were mainly mountainous and forested areas of
the borderland, many gangs also prowled in areas around large urban centres. Mączak
reports that the lands on the outs of the State of the Church and the Kingdom of Naples,
France and Savoy, France and Spain were especially convenient for bandits. There were
also zones of particular risk, for example, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the
road leading to Paris. The Balkans were also dangerous. In the mountain villages in the
Stara Planina range, a massif of southern Bulgaria under a hundred years of Turkish
occupation, numerous armed highlanders and robbers gathered in inacces-sible hiding
places, in caves and ravines, organizing themselves into regular bands [17].

After the English Civil War in the mid-1640s, outlawed royalist officers armed with fire-arms,
who were not familiar with trade and had no profession, remained unemployed. Their only
professional skill was the ability to use weapons and fight. Being in desperation, military
skills were used for criminal activities. From about 1650 to the turn of the nineteenth
and twen-tieth centuries it was commonly said that there were as many bandits as crows.
There was also a widespread fear of being on the road alone due to frequent attacks on
travellers. The danger was so great that many travellers wrote wills before embarking
on a long and dangerous journey.

In England, the image of a gentleman robber was created, and indeed some of the crimi-
nals came from wealthy backgrounds. Lady Katherine Ferrers, the wife of Sir Thomas Fan-
shaw, was a robber of an aristocratic family. Apparently, after dinner at their home, Lady
Ferrers appeared in a robber costume, after which she robbed her guests. A certain Sir
Humphrey Kynaston came from a privileged stratum, but after his estate fell into disrepair,
he became a bandit and began to attack travellers. He was an exception among criminals
because he shared the looted spoils with the poor, receiving food, shelter and protection in
return. Perhaps because of this, he was never captured. However, the vast majority were
degenerate violent criminals. Murder and sexual assault were common during robberies.
The most famous robber in England at the time was Dick Turpin. He was a ruthless bandit
who was active in a gang in the areas north of London. He was a member of the Essex
Gang, later working with the famous robber Tom King, with whom he carried out robberies
from his hideout in Epping Forest, and then hid in Yorkshire under the name John Palmer.
In 1738 he was arrested, tried and hanged for stealing horses in April 1739.

The law against the perpetrators of violent assault was harsh, the penalty was death;
culprits would mostly go to the gallows. The effectiveness of the fight against road banditry
was facilitated by the repetitive pistol used by the police, as well as the continuous
upgrading of po-lice methods, especially the creation of a mounted patrol around London
in 1805 and the establishment of the Metropolitan Police in 1829. The last major gang,
the Hanham and Cockroad gang, was stopped by a police sergeant in 1850 [18].

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Great danger was imminent not only during the journey on the road, but also during the
stay at an inn, at the resting place and overnight. It was impossible to trust the innkeepers
in the middle of no way and the carriers. Especially the motif of the “red inn” aroused
the fear in solo travellers or in small groups. As a symbol of a dangerous inn from the
sixteenth century, the inn at Straslund was mentioned, where eight hundred guests were
to fall victim. The horror of this story was that the body parts of these unfortunates were
supposedly eaten marinated by next guests to come! Theophilus Gautier (1811–72),
a French poet recalls an unpleasant experience with an innkeeper in Spain. The innkeepers
with whom he stayed with the appearance of gal-lows birds: “Convinced that we did not
understand Spanish, they asked our eskopeter if it would not be possible to rob us a few
miles away. José Maria’s former accomplice replied with a noble and dignified expression:
«I will not allow this to happen, these young men are in my company: they are expecting
an assault and have only on them as much as necessary for the journey, and the remainder
of the money in the bills of exchange in Seville. Besides, both are tall and strong; as for the
mine official, he is my friend, and in the galley we have four shotgun ». This convincing
argument appealed to reason to the host and his assistants, who this time confined
themselves to a simple robbery, permitted to the innkeepers of all countries” [19:234].

Damage to health or life could be caused in the robbery by marauding bandits, brabants,
thugs, as well as marauder soldiers or deserters. One of the descriptions of travel quoted
by A. Mączak gives us a view of the scale of dangers and reactions of contemporary
travellers. Young traveller artist, Nicholas Stone relates: “On Tuesday morning (around
eleven o'clock) we rode eighteen horses to go to Lyon. In the company there were two
Jesuits from Paris and the captain of the ship of the King of the French, as well as others
from very good company. A little before the night we met some riders, but they saw us so
strong and did not commit rape (but then we heard that the same company attacked the
carriage going to Lyon). Another time on this road we met and passed infantry troops of
the French and Swiss, because we were well armed and strong, we drove without danger”
[16:180].

Especially diaries and travel descriptions include numerous stories about robbers. Erik
Dahlbergh, who travelled around Europe in the mid-seventeenth century, mentions the
attacks he suffered in the years 1654–1655. He was particularly impressed by the attack
at Mount Vesuvius near Torre del Greco, when the wandering Swedes were attacked by
a gang of 16 people, robbed, undressed, and finally severely beaten. However, this was
not the end of the Swedes' experience, because on the border between the Kingdom of
Naples and the State of the Church they were attacked by forty bandits. However, they
managed to buy out of the oppression, giving the attackers ten doubloons (about 36
thalers) [16:186].

The notorious robbers were Lisowczyks, fearless mercenary soldiers. The Lisowczyk
detachment was organized at the beginning in 1614 by a certain “Polish Rider”, Aleksander
Józef Lisowski, notorious for his plunder, arbitrariness and cruelty. The regiment at various
times numbered from 2 to 20 thousand soldiers. For more than twenty-two years, they
aroused horror among the population of the areas where they fought and were stationed.
The immortality of the Lisowczyks was brought to the fame of the Lisowczyk attributed
to Rembrandt. The Lisowczyks were a formation consisting of outcasts and plebeians,
including criminals. The lack of hostilities, in the situation of unpaid remuneration,
deprived professional soldiers of their livelihood, hence for long periods they supported
themselves from robberies and looting.

Often, state guards and thugs acted together and in collusion. One such case is described
by Lady Anna Fanshawe, the wife of an English royalist during the English Civil War (the

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1640s). During a trip to Abbeville, the local governor advised the lady to take protection
be-cause of the threat of bandit assaults in that area. During the journey, Lady Fanshawe
met 50 well-armed riders who passed travellers at a safe distance. It turns out that they
cooperate with security soldiers. One of them says bluntly: “Lady, we are all from one
company and we are standing in this city” [16:187].

The problem of soldiers attacking and robbing travellers was also given in the descrip-
tion of the journey of Prince Władysław Waza. The chronicler of the journey, S. Pac writes
that in the vicinity of Brussels on the local roads it was very dangerous due to the large
number of wandering Spanish and Dutch troops: “Of these soldiers in a few dozen, in
a hundred and sometimes more people, both cavalry and infantry, falls on the roads and
on the other places that have no defence, fishing from one side and on the other, this
is the Olendra of the Spaniards and the Spaniards of the Olenders. (...) Therefore, the
soldiership or the part that is more playful from the company, having separated when the
merchant-li, foreigner-li are destroyed on the road, and this happens very often, is lost,
so there are always enough abdanked in that corner” [20:147].

John Rann, who was arrested six times for a robbery on the road, was a dangerous ban-
dit. He would avoid conviction until 1774, when he robbed a chaplain and was hanged for
this crime. Dating back to the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, information
comes about the Welsh bandit Twin Sion Cati (Thomas Jones). Legend has him as a Welsh
Robin Hood who was supposed to steal from the rich and help the poor. He prowled in the
vicinity of Cardiganshire. Robberies in the eighteenth century in England were a common
phenomenon. Travellers were often assaulted on access roads to London. Robbers on foot
were dangerous and most numerous, but the most audacious ones attacked on horseback,
acting alone or in small groups. They attacked most often travellers in carriages or
those travelling on horseback. The number of robbers increased at the beginning of the
eighteenth century. The victims of the robbery were stagecoach passengers, mail cabs,
carriages and wagons of farmers returning from the fair. Criminals armed with pistols
wore masks. Their cry “Stand up and deliver” usually worked, and travellers under the
blackmail of firearms gave away money and valuables without resistance [6].

In the 1820s, banditry had their high noon in Italy. A young travel writer Charles Macfarlane,
wandering through Abruzzi, described in the form of an interview the fate of one of the
most dangerous bandits at that time named Lupo, nicknamed “Passo di Lupo” (Step of the
Wolf). At that time, the area was part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and was under
the rule of the Bourbon dynasty. Passo belonged to a gang of outlaws called Vardarelli,
prowling the Ponte di Bovino, in a mountain range about thirty miles from his home in
Monte Gargano. Bandits robbed travellers in Apulia, crossed the Mountains of Basilicata
and ventured into other provinces plundering with impunity [21:17].

However, Eric Hobsbawm writes in his study on bandits that the career of bandits is
short because it is risky and usually only two years pass when a robber is captured and
punished or is forced to lead a lawful life [22:34–45].

However, the number of gangs and their audacity was so great that, in the face of the
weakness of the local police and the sluggishness in capturing and judging bandits,
especially rural areas of the country were very vulnerable to banditry. The police and
authorities were unable to ensure safety on the roads of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
Then, not wanting to get into bloody skirmishes with bandits, King Ferdinand was persuaded
to grant a pardon to all bandits who wanted to take advantage of the amnesty, and Passo
was one of those who took advantage of this opportunity.

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This problem with banditry in Italy existed until the Second World War. The last Sicilian
bandit was Salvatore Giuliano. He was very brash and even attacked the police. His fame
was a problem for the authorities and the police. Fight against him was waged through
and through; at various times the bandit was pursued by 2,000 policemen and soldiers.
He was eventually killed in 1950. A historian Eric Hobsbawm described Salvatore Giuliano
as the last of the folk bandits à la Robin Hood and the first whose activities were reported
in real time by the contemporary mass media [23:12].

Travelling around Spain in the 1840s, T. Gautier warns that peregrination across Spain
was a risky undertaking, apart from many inconveniences of travel: “there are rebels,
innkeeper thieves, scoundrels and miscreants whose honesty was determined by the
number of rifles on your part. Danger surrounds you, overtakes you, follows you; from
everywhere you hear only terrible and mysterious stories. Yesterday the bandits had their
supper in this hamlet. The robbers seized and abducted a convoy into the mountains
to obtain a ransom. Pallilos lurk in the place through which you have to pass. There is
certainly a lot of exaggeration in all this; and yet, even if you were the greatest sceptics,
you have to believe, since at every crossroads of the road you can see wooden crosses
with inscriptions such as: Aquimataron a un hombre (here a man was killed), Aquimurio
de mano irada (here he died a violent death) [13:204–205].

Mączak writes that robbery often took on the character of extortion, tolls collected from
visitors and it was not in the interest of robbers to kill travellers who did not resist. In Crete,
the robbery was so well organized that if one gang found a pilgrim to lack valuable items,
they then supplied him with a stamped piece of clay so that he could avoid being searched
by the next. In the 12th–13th centuries, the traveller was exposed to a large number of
all kinds of tolls. Often, various mountebanks forced travellers to pay for crossing the
river in a ford or passage or a bridge. A fee was charged at the passes, before entering
the stronghold or in any other place without a significant reason. Travellers tried to avoid
places of exorbitant fees, barriers of greedy masters and places overrun by marauding
robbers. Especially travellers-tourists and merchants going to the Pyrenean Peninsula had
to reckon with great trouble. Sometimes the duty collection was so high that it ruined
travellers. However, already in the Carolingian era, princes, especially in the Alps, tried
to take care of the safety of mountain pass crossings, because the officially collected
customs duties brought them considerable income [24:24].

In the nineteenth century, in the United States, an intensification of bandit attacks on train
passengers was noted. Huge areas, the development of rail communication and especially
the inability to provide protection to travellers by local security services, all these made
robbery easy. In the years 1840–1900, public order was guarded by a “watchman” who
was the guardi-an of order. However, the recruitment of officers took place in a random
way and the candidates were taught the police profession by older experienced colleagues
[25:36].

One of the most spectacular robberies of train travellers was the robbery by the bandit
Jesse James on a train in Iowa. His gang stopped a moving train. On 21 July, 1873, near
Adair, Iowa, James and his gang comrades damaged a rail section and then, as the train
approached, used a rope to remove the rails, causing the locomotive to derail. As a result
of the derailment of the train, the driver was killed and one of the passengers was seriously
injured. Then two masked robbers entered the rail cars and found a safe belonging to
the US Express Company in which they found only $2,000, then robbed the passengers
of the train.

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2. highlanders and robbers in old poland

Nineteenth-century historian Józef Szujski, touching on the problem of dangers in the
heyday of the Middle Ages in Poland, writes: “Rape, robbery and murder are an ordinary
thing, poisoning prowl violently in the thirteenth century. The spirit of a good farm turns
into a spirit of rip-off and waste. […] This is time of crime and Christian virtues, blasphemies
and inspirations” [26]. However, as the sources indicate, robberies and deprivation of
life were much rarer than common thefts, and Poland could be considered a country of
relative peace. Długosz in History of Poland2 writes that the growth of robberies and their
impunity in the Kingdom of Poland intensified especially during the interregnum periods.
Jan Długosz recalls that robberies boomed during the times of Prince Władysław Łokietek
and blames him for his indulgence towards the perpetrators of looting, villains and robbers,
pointing out that “Prince Władysław, involved in romances, led a promiscuous life at that
time” [27].

The most notorious robber in Poland, according to records from the mid-fifteenth century,
was the knight Jan of Czerna, burgrave of Bolkov, who owed his position to the Czech
king George of Poděbrady, in 1463. He carried out numerous robberies on travellers,
mainly towns-people travelling south to Bohemia. The burgrave’s robberies resulted in
the conclusion of an alliance of townspeople from Wrocław and Świdnica to fight the
robber. The townspeople of the two towns in 1468 organized a joint punitive expedition
and successfully attacked the robber’s castle with cannons. Jan of Czerna was captured
alive and out of respect for his noble state, the townspeople hanged him in spurs [28].

S. Milewski cites figures of robbery crimes: during the reign of King Sigismund I in the
years 1506–1509, robbers committed 566 murders in houses and on the roads of Poland
(without the Mazovian land and Bełskie Province). The largest number of robberies
occurred in Kraków Province – 169, and the Ruthenian Province – 145. A few decades
later, during the reign of Sigismund II Augustus, 308 robberies were recorded and their
growth, as many as 94 took place in Kraków Province [12:50].

Jan Kracik and Michał Rożek in their book Hultaje, złoczyńcy, wszetecznice w dawnym
Krakowie give examples of robberies and assaults in older Krakow and the surrounding
area. In 1568, a group of thugs murdered travellers on the roads near Krakow; in 1664,
municipal soldiers recruited from among Wieliczka salt-miners defended the suburb of
Kraków called Kazimierz against a raid of looters; two of defenders were killed. In 1688
news spread about bands robbing manors and vicarages in the quarter of Podgórze;
Kazimierz burghers kept guards days and nights for defence [29:99–100].

Not only better-off merchants and travellers were robbed on the roads near Krakow.
Likewise, the bandits did not show contempt for peasant bundles, especially as these were
no sweat to steal. In 1676, two small, degenerate nobles, Jan Gołąbek-Radwański and
Stanisław Brachowski, found robbery on road from Ojców to Liszki an easy way to earn
their living. They plundered merchants, craftsmen and peasants going and returning from
the fair. The bandits were ruthless as not only did they rob their victims, but also committed
several murders. In the end, they were captured, tortured and finally executed [29:100].

In the Polish lands, the Raubritters were particularly troublesome in Silesia (both Lower
and Upper). The practice of knights-robbers developed after the Hussite wars in the
fifteenth century, i.e. during the period of political and legal chaos. One of the most
notorious Silesian bandits was the legendary Black Krzysztof from Olszanica near Złotoryja.
In 1500–1512 this knight disturbed travellers on the roads, gaining ill reputation from
great cruelty, not only robbing merchants, burghers and knights, but often after robbing
2 Annals or Chronicles of the famous Kingdom of Poland is one of the most important sources of medieval Polish history. The author of the
annals, Jan Długosz, described the history of Poland in 12 books, from the legendary beginning of the Piast state up to 1480.

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them he would mete out a cruel death or wounds. After several years of unpunished
robberies, however, he was captured and executed in Legnica. Prince Rogatka was also
a degenerate knight robber. The problem of ma-rauding knights-robbers, mainly in Great
Poland and Silesia, was solved thanks to the swift ac-tions of Henry the Bearded and
Henry II the Pious.

Older Poland was a country of impassable forests, hence probably many legends and stories
were the inspiration for Adam Mickiewicz to write “Dad’s Return”. The content of the poem
presents a dramatic picture of the experiences associated with the dangers of the journey:
the merchant set off on the road, when he approaches the house, his children greet him.
He dismisses the servants and decides to return home on foot with the children. However,
all of a sudden, dangerous armed robbers show up. The father wanted to implore them
to save his and his children’s life and was minded to give up all his property. Eventually,
as a result of begging and prayers, the robbers abandon the robbery and allow everyone
to return home freely [30].

In 1661, most likely somewhere in the middle of nowhere robbers assaulted the out-
standing Dutch painter Pieter Danckerts de Rij, the court artist of King Ladislaus IV of
Poland. Danckerts was reported to die after two days as a result of the sustained injuries;
yet before his death he managed to draw images of bandits who were soon captured and
immediately execut-ed.

However, the safety of travellers in Poland compared to other European countries was
high. S. Milewski in his book W świecie występku i zbrodni quotes the opinion of the
German lawyer, historian and traveller Johann Erich Binter, travelling around Poland at
the beginning of the eighteenth century, on the safety of travel: “Irrespective of whether
it is day or night, one travels in Poland very safely: several thousand ducats are carried by
one man back and forth around the country, and even across the borders; often significant
sums are entrusted to quite unknown coachmen from distant Polish provinces, and no one
has yet heard that they were sto-len or robbed. In general, Poles are a nation too good-
hearted and too calm to commit such crimes” [12:48], [31:338].

This opinion is confirmed by the Livonian Fryderyk Schultz, although reluctant to the
Polish, passing through the Polish lands twice during the four-year Sejm and the third
time in 1793, he give advice to take the way not through Prussia, but through Poland,
where the post offices are faster and the roads are completely safe. At the same time,
he was sure that neither he nor any of his many acquaintances, travelling around Poland,
had ever seen anything suspicious in the darkest forests, even at night [31].

Also, according to the historian of administration Feliks Konieczny, Poland was relative-ly
safe compared to other countries of Europe at that time. Coxe, a professor at the University
of Cambridge, who travelled around Poland in 1779, accompanied by Lord Herbert, stated
that, despite the poverty of the rural people, he had never lost anything during the entire
journey, although they often left the carriage outside for the night without keeping an eye
on it. In order to get to know the country and the people more thoroughly, they travelled
by post coaches, spent the night in taverns, arranged meals by peasant bonfires, and
never suffered any adventure or loss. Then, having crossed the borders of the Russian
state, they left a servant in a carriage for the night and after each night they were found
to have some kind of theft perpetrated [31:338].

However, not all the outskirts of the Republic of Poland were equally safe. At the turn of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries particularly dangerous were the routes in the
eastern borderlands of the Republic of Poland. J. Kitowicz in Opis obyczajów za panowania

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Augusta III writes: “Public roads were also frequented by the Haidamaka outfits; in the
valley, sneaking not far from the road, they would keep an eye on the dust which in that
greasy soil behind every rider rises high up. They were therefore mindful of the size of
the dust: if they guessed out that by the size of dust a small convoy was approaching or
even someone unescorted, they would fall on him, strip him of everything he had, and
having beaten the victim with spear poles, his back, in a shirt alone they would let him
go […]” [32:333].

Despite relative safety, organized gangs prowled various parts of the country. One of the
most spectacular attacks in former Poland was recorded in 1787. The victim was the
magnate Szczęsny Potocki, and several carts of belongings, among the valuable items
there were jewels worth 20,000 ducats and 3,000 ducats in cash, which fell prey to the
robbers [12:48].

Mountain robbery was a common phenomenon, mainly in the Carpathian region, in

the foothills of the Beskid Mountains and the Tatra Mountains. In the Polish Highlands
there were packs of robbers called “societies”; in the Russian Subcarpathian region the
“hoodlums” were engaged in robber craftsmanship. The greatest intensification of robbery
in these areas took place at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Robbers
also prowled on the forest routes of the Beskid Sądecki, lived on the sidelines in deserted
houses, huts, or went to the mountains to hiding places in rock caves and chasms. Most
robbers originated from among the rural poor, although there were also representatives of
the impoverished nobility. The latter often became the leaders of bands of 10–20 robbers.
They were tempted by the spoils relatively easily accessible on the trade routes leading
from Poland to Hungary. Although robbery ensured rapid enrichment, rarely did a robbery
career last long. Often, after just a few robberies, the villain was shackled, later he faced
a trial, torture and most often gruesome death (quartering alive, breaking with a wheel,
driving onto a stake, hanging on a hook stuck in his ribs, hanging on a stake, burning at
the stake). In Muszyna in 1664, Prokop Kropka, hanged alive by the rib, was petering out
in agony. The Muszyna court became too well known for its harsh sentences, in the years
1647–1765 sentencing to death 21 robbers (9 to quartering, 3 to being woven into a circle,
1 to be put on a stake, 4 to hanging, 3 to beheading with a sword). The execution of the
con-victs took place on a hill under the gallows [33:5–13]. In Poland, the Polish nobility
fought against robbery, but to no avail. The Austrian authorities put an end to the practice
only in the nineteenth century [34:229].

3. peregrinations and traumatic experiences

of polish travellers
In the old Poland, despite various doubts and warnings against sending young people
on foreign trips, peregrinations had become a standard for high-born people. Stanisław
Orzechowski, a biographer of the Crown Hetman Jan Tarnowski, wrote: “Believe me, whoever
wants to be like this must needs see many things, must needs know the world” [35:688].

Mikołaj Rej and Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski encouraged foreign travel. In Polish memoir
literature dating back from the fifteenth century, numerous references to the dangers of
travel can be found. Jan Goryński, the author of Peregrynacje do Ziemi Świętej [36:263–
289] describes the unpleasant and frightening experience he got from the guards who
were supposed to protect him but turned out to be very dangerous; they “bled those under
their care of money rather than protected them” [37:22].

In the memoirs describing his peregrinations, Michał Krzysztof Radziwiłł the Orphan gives
an interesting description of the event that he and his companions experienced during

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the return journey from the Holy Land through the Italian coast of the Adriatic Sea to
Poland. Wandering Radziwiłł and five of his servants were attacked near the city of Piscary.
The prince himself and his servants were deceived and plundered without pardon. Only
the prince’s chest, which fell prey to banditti, was quite a spoil, because there were two
hundred sequins, two hundred scuds, Turkish knives wonderfully framed, precious stones
and other gold objects [37:96], [16:184].

Another adventure is described by the same Radziwiłł the Orphan in the Peregrinations
to the Holy Land and Egypt in the eighties of the sixteenth century3. The event took place
in Heliopolis, a city located in northern Palestine on the eastern slopes of the Lebanese
Mountains on the then route from Trypoli to Damascus. Radziwiłł the Orphan mentions
robberies and the dangers of travel [37:40, 42–43,56 ].

Radziwiłł the Orphan learned from a trip to the Holy Land, and this lesson that he had
learnt was that Arabs extort money more from Turks than from Christians and that in
Egypt merchants are safe for the Turks have great benefit from this [37:130].

The fact that foreign travel can have a bad impact on the health and minds of young
people was well known in old Poland. Many warnings were heard at magnate courts.
Jakub Sobieski, father of Jan III Sobieski, says about travelling Poles that “harsh is their
life, who as calves come to someone else’s land and leave it as oxen” [38:247]. Hetman
Stanisław Żółkiewski also advises his wife not to send her son abroad as from there he
will not return with anything good.

Another danger was lying in wait for Polish travellers-tourists – other Poles. Jakub
Sobieski commands his sons (1st half of the seventeenth century) Mark and Jan to avoid
their compatriots when travelling and abroad. The Bełsk voivode voices his warning in
instructions to his sons, under the threat of paternal disfavour: “If it comes to conversation
with our Poles, I already beseech you with fatherly love for God sake, I order and enchant
you under my bless-ing to act as carefully as possible, and plead to God for it, that as few
Poles as possible will there be where you will stand” (Sobieski justifies this prohibition
with the volatility of Poles, gossip, jealousy, waste, etc.) [38:258].

4. defences
In ancient times, robbery on the roads was so common that some municipalities were
forced to establish special offices to combat robbers. In order to fight crime, legion
outposts in the provinces organised large-scale manhunts, which, however, only partially
eliminated the threat.

In the early Middle Ages, among the punishments, there was also a bizarre custom
of kynophoria, consisting in forcing the convict to carry a live dog on his back from
one German province to another. This punishment was introduced in 9th century by
Charlemagne and was applied only to men from the aristocracy (the nobility carried a cat)
who were accused of robbery. The size of the dog being carried (the size of the disgrace)
was proportional to the punishment. This law was applied especially during the reign of
Otto I (936–973).

The concept of mir (inner peace) was introduced into the law in the Middle Ages. One of
the types of mir was the local mir-including, among others, the road. The legal system
in-creased penalties for so-called private crimes, which included petty and large larceny,
robbery and assault. Villains once captured, if they were not proven to have perpetrated
3 Mikołaj Krzysztof Radziwiłłt Orphan set off on a journey to the Holy Land on 16 September 1582 and happily returned to Poland on 29
May 1584.

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major crimes, were stigmatised with their fingers or hands cut off, likewise their ears or
part of them at best. Travellers were to beware of those so stigmatised.

In the eleventh century, the economic role of merchants increased, and its representatives
became the richest stratum of the urban community. The need to protect material goods
and improve travel safety prompted merchants to counteract marauding bands of robbers
on the roads. For this purpose, guilds were established, which were associations of
a defensive and social nature at the same time. Guild members jointly and severally
bore the costs of organising travel, gathering goods and their safety, which was aimed at
spreading the risks associated with trade to guild members.

From the tenth centuries onwards, pilgrimages from Western Europe to the Holy Land
were no longer exceptional. Muslims did not actually hinder this movement, even when
wealthy travellers took an armed detachment with them to protect themselves from the
thugs. However, pilgrims going on the road were informed about frequent cases of attacks
on Christians in the Holy Land. Hence, when in 1119 in Jerusalem two French knights
Hugh de Payns (the first Grand Master) and Gottfried de Saint-Omer founded the Order,
it was hoped that it would serve the purpose of protecting places connected with the life
of Christ, as well as ensuring safety on the roads, mainly with a view to protecting pil-
grims against Saracen robbers.

Wealthy travellers could count on escort services provided by mercenaries. Mercenaries

escorting travellers in the Franconian countries were called cottereaux, as well as
“adventurers”, “foreigners” because they were most often Brabants or Aragonese. Their
armament consisted of long knives. Many of them also came from sparsely populated
lands as well as from the poor deprived of their own land originating from the suburbs of
Dutch cities. They hired themselves seasonally to serve in escorting transports of merchant
wagons [39:105–106].

In order to avoid seizures and material losses, a kind of camouflage was used. While
travelling without a proper escort, it was important not to brag about wealth. For this
reason the comfort of travel was often abandoned, and travellers satisfied themselves with
modest living conditions. Some were so cautious that they sold their mount, continuing
on foot in modest disguise. This is how Fynes Morysom carried out part of his journey
through Europe (from Stras-bourg to Paris). Camouflage was also commonly used by
others. A. Mączak in the book Życie codzienne w podróżach po Europie w XVI i XVII w.
writes that Bartłomiej Sastrow travelling mostly on foot as an experienced traveller-tourist:
“sewed gold in the collar of his shirt, a valuable chain in his trousers. He didn’t carry
much baggage: a shirt and a manuscript of his deceased brother’s poems, a bundle on his
shoulder, a rapier at his side and a rosary – all to look like a Catholic soldier rushing to
a meeting. After some time, however, this turned out to be risky and Sastrow successfully
began to pretend to be mute” [16:185].

An anonymous Pole and at the same time a tourist of 1595 leaves an interesting literary
account in the form of Diariusz peregrynacji włoskiej, hiszpańskiej i portugalskiej [37:130],
in which he describes the vicissitudes with bandits, as he used a trick when they told him
of bandits lurking on the road. The traveller headed towards a village called Spaccafurno.
He walked on foot because of the news of robbers, and he was refused a horse when he
asked for it. On the way, he was attacked and searched by robbers who found nothing
on him, and having considered him poor, even helped him with alms. He later confessed
with satisfaction that he had out-witted the thugs because he had 80 red “Hungarian
kreuz ducats” hidden in his shoes. He said that on that day he had walked 32 Italian
miles [37:130].

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Thomas Coryat, who travelled at the beginning of the sixteenth century, also defended
himself with a trick. The incident took place in the vicinity of Baden. When two thugs
approached Coryat, who was dressed as a poor wanderer, he humbly took off his hat and
then, stretching out his hand, suggestively asked for alms. This ploy turned out to be
effective and the thugs, who were confused, not only did not attack the wanderer, but also
gave him a small sum, which was enough for him for half a dinner [16:188]. Tricks were
probably an effective weapon, mainly where the traveller faced the numerical superiority
of the aggressor. Where one was threatened by an attack of one or two assaulters, a well-
trained in fencing and hand-to-hand combat person had a chance to get himself out of
oppression with a defensive hand.

The ability to fight hand-to-hand has been the basis of individual defence for centuries,
and it was particularly important in times of wars, unrest, riots, and threats of robbery
and looting. In the Middle Ages, the art of hand-to-hand combat belonged to the main
seven knightly arts –„Sieben Behendigkeiten der Ritter” – which prepared a knight for
battle. Although the cold steel was a symbol of nobility, the most effective weapon of
the traveller was the knife. Knowledge of the knife fighting technique could save the
traveller’s life both in the town back-street, in an inn, and when he was attacked on the
road. The knife could be used in a secretive way. It was easier to carry on the go than an
epée or a firearm. However, where gangs were numerous and well-organised, the attempt
at resistance could have tragic consequences. Among the villains, most often there were
ordinary miscreants, but during the war one could often come across well-armed and
trained soldiers who were ruthless in battle. Roger Ascham, a Cambridge scholar, visiting
the Netherlands and Germany in the mid-sixteenth century, observed that the forests near
Cologne and Aachen were full of well-armed villains. In this situation, those who could
afford it hired an escort. Fear of bandits led travellers to ally in larger groups. This was
intentional, and the escort cost less at the time. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
in the territory of a large part of Germany as well as the southern Netherlands, it was
possible to hire a detachment of soldiers as escorts to pass a certain section of the route.
And since there was a fight somewhere almost continuously, it was not difficult to find a
professional soldier either. In the times of wars waged at a laze pace: “In the fortresses,
soldiers got engaged in trade, crafts, cultivated gardens. The Swiss papal guards out of
service acted as guides on the «mirabilia» of the Eternal City; individual soldiers and
entire units in their free time sought profitable employ-ment” [16:186].

Wealthy travellers set off with their own escort or hired professional soldiers. If they
were also well-connected personalities, having family affinities with the ruling courts
of Europe, then, even in times of great unrest, they could travel relatively safely. When
in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, Prince Władysław Waza went on a trip
to the countries of Western Europe (1624–1625), he was accompanied by a 50-person
procession. The trip was well organized. The departure of the prince was preceded by
letters of recommendation to important per-sonalities of the countries through which the
procession was to pass. Where it was particularly dangerous, local notables on their own
initiative took care to increase the escort. This was the case during the prince's stay in
Würzburg where the local bishop provided him with protection by putting 30 soldiers at
his disposal for further travel [33:129].

It was good to have a significant person in the area of the planned route as a patron or
a guide. Stanisław Pac, a participant of the aforementioned trip of Prince Władysław, and at the
same time the royal secretary of Sigismund II, recalls one of the incidents during the trip to
Brussels. When he went from Kolno to the back of Prince Władysław to the Archduchess Infante
along the route, the journey was dangerous. Fortunately, on the way he was accompanied
by conte Ernesto a Linden In Reken, whom the Prince had sent with him earlier, secretly

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going with the convoy on his way. Conte Ernesto a Linden In Reken knew well the route of
travel and these areas, because he had his possessions there, so in his company he travelled
safely, because if it were not for his company, he would have to have a large escort. He also
reported that during the trip, he watched the lurking robbers along the road. However,
seeing the well-known conte Ernest and Linden In Reken, they withheld from the attack. If
he had driven alone, he would certainly have been a victim of their robbery. [33:147–148].

Only a few could count on such an organized trip in terms of safety. The peregrinations
of the elites were well planned and the organizers who were in their service had the
necessary knowledge in the field of threats and travel experience. At the same time, they
also had large financial resources and organizational capabilities. During Władysław
Waza's journey, Stanisław Pac took care of his safety. When in September 1624 the prince
was to go from Brussels to Namur, having obtained from the governor of Maastricht
confidential information about a planned attack on his retinue by Dutch soldiers, he used
a trick, changed the route and went to Diest by another road. However, the governor
of Maastricht was cautious, hearing about ru-mours that 500 Dutch cavalry intended
to ambush the Prince, strengthened his retinue with a hundred cavalry and as many
infantrymen [33:157–159].

A fast horse could also be a good means of hasty retreat from robbers, and such was an
excellent defender butcher dog Rottweiler, too. This dog had been bred by Roman legions in
the town of Rottweil and bred there initially by butchers. When its extraordinary defensive
qualities were recognized, it served wandering merchants as a means of defence against
thieves and robbers attacking merchants' wagons. Merchants highly valued this breed
and had a lot of confidence in them. When travelling, fearing looting, they would often tie
purses of money to their dogs’ necks, in order to secure their property. The fearless and
formidable Rottweiler along the route and in the thickets of the forest was unreachable
to the robbers [17:147-148]4.

In Europe, fight against banditry on the roads has been carried out for centuries with
a varying degrees of success. In the fifteenth century, René of Anjou, Duke of Lorraine,
Anjou, King of Naples and Count of Provence, made efforts to ensure the safety of those
travelling around his estates in southern France by ordering court officials to capture
anyone who violated the safety of travellers. Soon, two dangerous robbers, Wilhelm
Goy, called Maltostens (“doing evil everywhere”) and Peter Archilion, were tracked down
and imprisoned. The investigation was entrusted to an apt judge Rajmond Tesseyre. The
course of the trial is known thanks to the notes drawn up by the notary Jan Stariti. When
the lengthy interrogations did not bring results, the judge ordered torture, which was
not used, because when Maltostens saw the instruments of torment, he began to testify
revealing that he had acted together with another bandit Peter Mar-chion and others.
He also confessed to the murder in the Boissiére Gorge of a 25-year-old young man, from
whom they robbed 16 gold coins [40:21–23, 46–50]. Peter Archilon was also charged by
another captured bandit, Wilhelm Breton, who admitted to assaulting a young student
and robbing him for the sum of 40 pieces of gold. When the judge, impatient with the
course of the trial, ordered torture, the mere sight of the tools caused Archilon’s “sincere
confessions”. The bandit revealed that he belonged to a gang of 20 robbers divided into
packs attacking travellers on the roads of Provence. The gang joined once or twice a year
to split the loot. Despite pleading guilty, the judges’ sentence was severe, though not very
cruel, Maltostens and Archilon were hanged on the scaffold without torments.

4 The story of Friedrich Louis Dobermann, who is considered the father of the Doberman breed, is also known. Dobermann in the nineteenth
century was a municipal official in the municipality of Apollo, he served as a manager of municipal real estate. He was also a city dog catcher
and a tax collector. For this reason, he often had to travel long distances on horseback with a purse full of communal money. For fear of
robbery, he came up with the idea of creating a dog, through appropriate crosses, which could become its protector in a critical situation,
just like a Rottweiler dog. Soon dogs from the Dobermann kennel gained popularity throughout Thuringia, then in Germany, a little later
throughout Europe.

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To a large extent, probably also the safety of travellers prompted representatives of 63

Hanseatic cities to adopt in 1557 during the general congress in Lübeck a treaty that
guaranteed, among others, joint action against enemies and protection of trade routes.
The document was delivered and sealed by four cities: Braunschweig, Gdańsk, Cologne
and Lübeck. In Poland, more than two and a half centuries earlier, the cities under German
law Poznań, Gniezno, Pyzdry and Kalisz formed a similar confederation, obtaining from
King Władysław Łokietek the privilege of punishing robbers and assaulters with death.
The right of punishment was ex-tended even to persons of the noble state.

Although all over Europe there were attempts to fight the scourge of robbers, the effect of
these actions was small. In the Papal State, police decrees against robbers only frightened
potential travellers. Advice for travelling tourists was included by Geogia Loysia in the
instruction of 1600. He advises that in a foreign country, as precautions, they should not
criticise customs or religion. They should also lie down for safety during the day in hay
or in the grass. In inns, he recommended tourists to look for clean places, to examine the
location of the room for the solidity of the bolts and doors [16: 194]. In 1613, the Magnate
Zbigniew Osoliński, sending his son Jerzy abroad, ordered him to check the “safety of
inns” in the Reich.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in France, the scourge of banditry reached
considerable proportions. One of the most notorious bandits was Philip Guillery, a soldier
of king Henry IV’s troops. Philip Guillery and his two brothers formed a gang whose
number reached 500 thugs. The gang prowled the roads, robbing and collecting tribute
from travellers. After a few years, strong armed units were sent to the Area of Lower
Poitou against the Guillery gang for pacification. The bandits were smashed; one of the
brothers was killed; another was broken with a wheel, and Guillery himself escaped the
chase, but was soon handed over and executed in La Rochelle.

In 1721, the rogue activity of another bandit of the notorious Cartouche was put to an
end. This French villain organized a gang of former soldiers initially 200 strong, and
at the peak of his activity he kept about 2,000 people under his command. The gang
attacked stagecoaches, as well as private estates and places of trade. Cartouche became
a symbol of the bandit’s impu-nity, but was eventually captured and put on trial. In prison,
the investigator subjected the Con-ciergerie to elaborate torture: he had him put on
“laced-up boots” and then drove into his shave 8 iron wedges, and finally subjected him
to breaking with a wheel. At the place of execution, in the face of death, he eventually
managed to denounce his comrades. For eighteen hours there was a march of the thugs
he had betrayed. Honest confessions, however, did not save the ban-dit’s life. On Grevé
Square, the executioner broke his bones with an iron hammer, then the body crushed on
the wheel was fixed on top of a pole.

During the French Revolution, gangs of so-called “scorchers” and “carriages” prowled
on the territory of France. The actions of the gangs were facilitated by the situation of
chaos and anarchy during the Great Terror and the Directory. No route was safe, bandits
robbed and tor-mented captured travellers. In this situation, at the beginning of 1801
the Consulate established criminal courts to judge cases of robbery [41:144]. Soon, the
French government sent Jean Bon Saint-André to the Rhineland (which came under
the French rule) with considerable forces to clear the Normandy territories of bands
of plunderers. At that time, the famous bandit from the Rhine was Johannes Bückler
called Schinderhannes (“John the Skinstripper”), who created a gang modelled on a real
army, divided into independent corps. The actions of the troops brought the expected
result, and soon Schinderhannes’ gang was broken up and its members captured and
put into the prisons of Koblenz and Cologne. Soon, the very chief Schinderhannes was

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also captured in the territory of France. During the investigation, prosecutors charged
him with 65 crimes, including bloody slaughter. The verdict was a foregone conclusion,
on 21 November 1803 Schinderhannes, one of the most dangerous bandits of his time,
was beheaded on a scaf-fold.

In Poland, in the early Middle Ages, matters related to road safety were in the competence
of the monarch, as well as voivodes and castellans. However, apprehension of the
perpetrators of robberies mainly belonged to high royal officials. In the countryside, the
duty to catch thugs was incumbent on the members of the territorial community called
local settlements. Later, a watchman’s office was introduced. At the end of the thirteenth
and in the first half of the fourteenth century, in order to ensure safety on roads that were
under threat especially by knights-robbers, the cities of Greater Poland and Silesia formed
confederations, which even maintained armed troops. The fight against robbery on the
roads was vigorously led by kings Władysław Łokietek and Kazimierz. At the end of the
thirteenth century, initially in the prov-inces, and since the mid-fourteenth century, in
the strongholds, the offices of starostas (heads of local communities) were established,
who were to watch over security matters. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the
prosecution of criminals threatening public peace5, and later on putting them before
municipal courts was dealt with by the justiciaries (torturers). It was a police and judicial
office, functioning during the period of formation of the office of the starosta in former
Poland. The torturer not only prosecuted the road robbers regardless of their state affili-
tion, but also investigated and judged, and then meted out punishments. The office known
al-ready in the fourteenth century was liquidated when the police and judicial power passed
into the hands of starostas. The office of the torturer was formally liquidated by Jogaila
(Jagiełło) in 1388; however, in some areas, it was maintained until the end of the fifteenth
century, then it was subordinated to the starosta between 15th and 16th centuries. The
torturers acted only in Lesser Poland as officials subordinate to the king [42:210].

From the sixteenth century, starostas entrusted competences concerning security to their
deputies. It also happened that if a starosta (his deputy) did not have enough militia under
their command to fight a gang of robbers, he could gather the local nobility. Starostas in
Poland until the 2nd half of the eighteenth century were the only permanent local police
authority. In the seventeenth and the 1st half of the eighteenth century, when the danger of
travel was particularly high, for example in the Subcarpathian region, starostas organised
mercenary troops of the so-called harniks to combat robbery. Peasants were also forced
to cooperate. An important role in ensuring safety on the roads of the former Republic of
Poland was also played by the military forces of the Polish magnates. In the countryside,
matters of order and security were entrusted to vogts (rural municipality administrators),
who performed police duties with the help of officials under oath elected for a period of
three years. In cities, the security services were subordinate to the mayor and the city
council, and some cities maintained a large city militia. Sometimes police activities were
taken over by burgraves who aided by house servants captured criminals (if they had
any). According to the constitution of 1507, the burgrave was entrusted with guarding
road safety and catching criminals [42:213].

But there were also those who although brought to justice, beat the charge. An example
is a certain Samuel Łaszcz (1588–1649) – a nobleman, a well-known firebrand and
a Lisowczyk rider, who organised bandit regiments subsisting on robberies. Łaszcz was
sen-tenced to banishment 236 times and infamy 37 times. This robber, a petty noble,
however, did not care much about court verdicts because, as a soldier he rose to fame in
many wars, and was under the exclusive jurisdiction of the hetman and was protected by
a kind of immunity. It was rumoured about Samuel Łaszcz that only creditors and a gypsy

5 Crimes are split into four magistrate articles: arson, robbery of a house, robbery on the road, rape of a woman

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e-ISSN 2080-9999

musician did not leave him until his death.

conclusions
Always, both in the most distant history and now, travel has been accompanied by danger.
Nowadays, insecurity is becoming a basic barrier to tourist travel to high-risk areas. Threats
on the road are of a difficult nature to predict, from the dangers caused by the forces of
nature to the deadly threat resulting from human actions, most often with an intent to
rob, but also against a political (terrorism), religious or national background. Despite the
ongoing civilizational changes, including the extraordinary dynamics of cultural changes,
the dangers of travel still show an analogy to the former days. The end of the nineteenth
century was a borderline period, it marked the irretrievable end of primitive road banditry.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Karl Beadeker wrote in his guidebook: “Public
safety in the vicinity of commonly visited Italy, Sicily and Sardinia is as significant as in the
rest of Europe” [16:272]. At the same time, travellers were advised not to say where they
were going and not to show off their wealth.

The development of safe communication, the emergence of strong state bodies in Europe
with a developed system of security apparatus effectively limited and then eliminated the
epicentres of high-risk areas, which does not mean the complete elimination of road banditry.
Also today, information about attacks on tourists is coming from some regions of Europe,
the mechanisms and methods are confusingly similar to those known from history.

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Cite this article as:

Godlewski P, Skalski DT, Mruczyk R.
The dangers of travel ‒ Banditry on the roads in the old days
Balt J Health Phys Act. Balt J Health Phys Act. 2021;13([Link].1):195-214
doi: 10.29359/[Link].Iss1.19

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