It started in northern Moldavia and, after three weeks in which it was localized in that area, it quickly spread, reaching Wallachia, including as far as Oltenia.

[3] The fall of the price of grain on the world markets meant that the lessors would demand ever greater rents in order to make ends meet.

The revolt quickly spread southward, losing some of its anti-Semitic character and becoming basically a protest against the existing system of land tenure.

The fear of remaining out of work, combined with the activities of alleged Austro-Hungarian instigators, led the peasants to revolt.

The exact number of peasant deaths is unknown, and even the course of events are not clear, because the government, to hide the size of the massacre, ordered the destruction of all documents relating to the uprising.

Prince Johann of Schönburg-Hartenstein [cs], the minister plenipotentiary of Austria-Hungary in Bucharest at the time, and also General Averescu estimated the number of dead between 1,000–2,000.

[12][13] Another assessment of the number of victims was made by Major Gheorghe Dabija [ro] who in February 1910 was appointed by General Grigore C. Crăiniceanu to analyze 32 files that referred to this event.

Seventy-five soldiers of the Fifth Dorobanți Regiment ("Vlașca") appeared before military courts and charged with revolt; 61 were sentenced to hard labor for life and 14 to five years in prison.

Others emphasized that the government had a special responsibility for the fate of the peasantry and the country in general, and therefore an urgent solution to the "peasant question" was required.

[17] Many teachers, priests and other countryside intellectuals were arrested, as were pro-universal suffrage activists Vasile M. Kogălniceanu and Alexandru Vălescu, who were regarded as instigators of the revolt.

[19] The events continued to resonate in the Romanian conscience, and were the subject of one of the novels of the interwar period, Răscoala ("The Revolt"), by Liviu Rebreanu, published in 1932.