The opposition of Lipce villagers to German settlement at Podlesie is a struggle over who may claim land: those able to buy it, or the community whose livelihood and future depend on it. What begins as discussion of a possible purchase becomes a collective intervention. A proposed bargain gives way to a face-to-face confrontation in which Rocho argues for the villagers, while Mateusz turns their grievance into a threat of open resistance. The delegation withdraws before violence breaks out, but the encounter makes plain how readily a dispute over land can become a conflict between communities.

A threatened sale and competing strategies

The campaign takes shape when Grzela tells the young men that Podlesie has not yet been sold to the Germans, though the deed could be signed at any time—perhaps as soon as the following Thursday. The danger is therefore urgent but not yet settled: the villagers are responding to a transaction they believe may soon take place, and their discussion concerns how to prevent it.

Grzela’s initial answer is negotiation rather than force. He proposes making peace with the squire in exchange for a morgen of woodland and asking for four morgen of fields at Podlesie. He cites a village near Płock that, as he had read in a newspaper, had made a similar arrangement. The suggestion astonishes and heartens the listeners because it offers a concrete way to secure land without immediately confronting the German buyers. Grzela’s reading and knowledge of events beyond Lipce give him authority as a strategist, though the proposal remains only a plan under discussion.

Others favour direct pressure. One proposal is to approach the Germans collectively and tell them not to buy Podlesie. If they proceed, the villagers would refuse to let them sow or build, and would remain in the fields rather than yield possession. The language of peaceful notice quickly shades into coercion: the speakers expect that a united village will frighten the buyers away, while Grzela warns that such threats could send the men back to prison. Their debate reveals a practical dilemma. Negotiation depends on the squire’s willingness to bargain; deterrence depends on the villagers’ ability to act together and accept the risk of official punishment.

Rocho leads the delegation

By early Sunday the villagers have reached agreement to go after vespers. Rocho is to lead them because he can speak with the Germans in their own language, a practical skill that makes him the chosen intermediary. Their departure is marked by jubilant hooting, but the approach to Podlesie is not carefree. The peasants walk more slowly as they near the settlers, gripping their staffs and fixing them with defiant looks. Rocho greets the Germans in their language, and then states in Polish that the group has come on behalf of the whole village to ask them not to buy Podlesie. The men behind him echo the request, beating their sticks.

The appeal meets disbelief and anger. The old German settler demands to know by what right the villagers would forbid a purchase. Rocho explains their position, but the answer is categorical: “The land belongs to the one who pays for it!” Rocho counters, “It should belong to the one who needs it,” and answers the suggestion that this would amount to taking land without payment by invoking the labour of their hands. The exchange condenses the conflict into two rival measures of ownership. The settlers assert the claim of purchase; Rocho presents need and work as grounds for belonging.

The disagreement is not merely a difference of principle. The settlers say they have bought Podlesie and that it will remain theirs, then order the visitors to leave. Grzela responds with a demand that they keep their hands off the villagers’ land. The words expose the gap between the deed as a property claim and the villagers’ understanding of Podlesie as land on which their community has a stake. Rocho’s calm explanation cannot reconcile the two positions.

Threats, restraint, and collective force

As the exchange hardens, the villagers close ranks and edge forward. Mateusz brushes Rocho aside and confronts the settlers directly, accusing them of mocking a delegation that had come in good faith. He declares that they will not settle at Podlesie and invokes a war without boundaries of time or place. His threats of fire, ruined crops, and cattle lost at pasture make clear that the resistance he proposes would reach beyond a single confrontation. The peasants answer him together: “War! War! So help us God!”

The settlers reach for poles, rifles, and stones; women watch anxiously from the windows, children hide in the hallways, and dogs growl beside the walls. The scene approaches a physical clash, with both groups facing one another in a tight formation and the villagers’ sticks striking the ground. Rocho then gathers his men and leads them away. They retreat watchfully, turning aside rather than letting the confrontation become a fight. Their taunts as they leave show that withdrawal does not mean reconciliation: anger and defiance persist even as Rocho prevents the immediate encounter from becoming violent.

Land grievance and the limits of unity

The Podlesie campaign belongs to a wider pattern of collective action in Lipce, where villagers have already mobilized against the manor’s felling of woodland. In that earlier dispute, people filled the square and waited for Boryna, whom they regarded as the village’s foremost farmer and natural leader. When the manor excluded Lipce men from the logging work, the grievance joined customary claims to the forest with the immediate need for wages. The crowd’s call to go to the forest turned discussion into action, and peasants, hired hands, women, and older children set out together. The episode provides a precedent for the Podlesie delegation: collective presence is a source of leverage, but it also carries the danger of arrest and escalation.

That economic pressure is especially sharp for hired workers. Villagers point out that at least twenty men need work, that winter has damaged potatoes, and that some households already eat a hot meal only once a day. They had expected the felling at Wolf’s Hollow to provide employment; instead, the squire has vowed not to hire anyone from Lipce after a complaint was lodged against him. The woodland dispute therefore concerns both rights and survival. A similar indictment of village life comes through in accounts of poor families facing hunger, illness, debts, and fields left untilled while men are imprisoned. The villagers’ claim to land at Podlesie emerges amid scarcity, not as an abstract argument about ownership.

The proposed approach also reveals the limits of solidarity. Grzela urges a negotiated settlement and fears imprisonment; Mateusz presses toward confrontation. Rocho’s language skills and his role as emissary make a united appeal possible, while his decision to withdraw prevents the group’s anger from becoming an immediate fight. Elsewhere in Lipce, collective resolve appears in other forms: villagers refuse to respond when the notary tries to send one of them to the manor for fish, and a crowd closes around gendarmes before parting to let them through. Such moments show both the force and the precariousness of communal action. At Podlesie, unity can bring the villagers to the settlers’ door, but it cannot by itself settle who owns the land or guarantee what will follow.