Documentary: Juraj Jánošík: Life, Trial and Legend of Slovakia's National Hero

Liptovský Mikuláš, 16 March 1713. Before the county court of Liptov stands a young man from the mountains. The prosecutor calls him a public robber. The defender asks for acquittal.

The accused is twenty-five years old. His name: Juraj Jánošík. In two days, his life will be decided. And in the three hundred years that follow – his fame.

Few names in Slovakia are as well known. Songs, poems and films tell of a hero who took from the rich and gave to the poor. But how much of that is in the records? Not a single contemporary picture of Juraj Jánošík exists.

What we know comes from a baptismal register, a muster roll and court books. These traces are thin – but surprisingly concrete. Let us follow them. Terchová, a village below the peaks of the Malá Fatra, in the north of the Kingdom of Hungary.

It has no parish church of its own. Baptisms are held down at Varín on the Váh. There, in the baptismal register, on page 34, is the entry of 25 January 1688: a child of Martin Jánošík and Anna, baptised with the name Georgius – Juraj. The register gives no date of birth.

And for a long time it was not even certain which Juraj was meant. Between 1688 and 1694, four boys of that name were baptised at Varín. Only the siblings – Barbora, Ján, Martin and Adam – identify the family beyond doubt. The next piece of evidence is military.

On 2 December 1707, a muster roll of Colonel Winkler's insurgent regiment lists a Juraj Jánošík. He is nineteen, and fighting on the side of the kuruc – the insurgents of Francis Rákóczi against the Habsburgs. On 3 August 1708, the kuruc suffer a heavy defeat at Trenčín. Whether Jánošík was there, no record reveals.

The change of sides is documented: soon he is serving in an imperial guard unit at the castle of Bytča. Among his prisoners is a robber captain from the Kysuce region. Tomáš Uhorčík. According to the trial record, the young guard does him small services.

In 1710, his parents buy him out. That same year, Uhorčík also gets out of prison. Whether Jánošík helped him escape is disputed. It has never been proven.

Autumn 1711. The kuruc war has just ended, and during the war, banditry has grown sharply. Uhorčík seeks Jánošík out in Terchová and recruits him. Around Michaelmas, 29 September, he takes the robbers' oath.

The records preserve its words: I swear to eternal God that I shall not betray, deceive or abandon my companions – in fortune or misfortune. Before the winter, Uhorčík marries a shepherd's daughter and withdraws under a false name – as Martin Mravec, in the village of Klenovec, far to the south. Command of the band passes to Jánošík. This is not a fixed unit.

From the testimonies we know some twenty names: men from villages such as Dunajov, Staškov and Oščadnica, others from Moravia and Poland. And there are helpers who provide food, gunpowder and shelter. On 17 August 1712, a manorial court records that the people of Terchová supply robbers with food and shelter. The indictment lists the counties: Trenčín, Nitra, Turiec, Liptov, Orava – and even Silesia.

On 5 October 1711, the victim is Ján Šipoš, a merchant of Žilina: cloth and linen. Below Strečno, Jánošík takes the fur jacket of a priest on a raft. From the goldsmith Skalka of Žilina: seven rings, silver spoons, a broadsword. In May 1712, Šipoš once more – this time a belt and four florins.

Noblemen lose guns and sabres. And in autumn 1712, between Východná and Važec, the wife of the imperial officer von Schardon: jewellery, a gun, wigs. This robbery will be his undoing. Liptov County has to pay compensation, and wants the culprit at any cost.

And the loot? Cloth, a few florins, weapons, sheep from the shepherds' huts. Things for personal use, historians say. No source documents loot being handed to the poor.

The only things he demonstrably gave away were the goldsmith's rings – to girls in Terchová. Only one killing is linked to the band. September 1712. On his way back from Frivald, Juraj Vrtík, the parish priest of Domaniža, is shot by two robbers.

On 2 October, he dies. The death register records in Latin: shot through by two robbers. Jánošík testifies that his companions Plavčík and Huncaga fired – and that he was drinking water at the well. Or was it the priest who was drinking?

The wording allows both. The court will later find: he was present. That he fired himself, it does not find. In autumn 1712, Jánošík and Uhorčík are arrested at Klenovec – over a robbery they had nothing to do with.

They are taken to Hrachovo. But the deputy county head speaks up for them, and they are released. By way of thanks, they send fox furs and cheeses. Legend turns this into a daring escape.

The records speak of release. The second arrest is final. Liptov county haiduks seize Jánošík in Uhorčík's house. Exactly when is disputed – around the turn of the year, or early March 1713.

How it happened, the court records do not mention at all. Back to March 1713, in Svätý Mikuláš. Presiding is the deputy county head Ladislav Okolicsányi; the prosecutor is Alexander Čemický, the court-appointed defender Baltazár Palugyay. The legal basis is Hungarian law – the Tripartitum prescribes the stake or the wheel for robbers.

On day one, Jánošík confesses freely. He is confronted with the merchant Šipoš and the goldsmith Skalka. Of Liptov County's 29 questions, he leaves 14 unanswered. And he lies to protect a friend: Uhorčík, he says, died in the Kremnica Mountains.

Yet at that very time, Martin Mravec is being held in custody. On the second day, the court orders torture – first lighter, then heavier. Because he will not name his helpers, or where the loot is hidden. Under torture, he admits the robberies of Mrs von Schardon and of the nobleman Zmeškal.

And he describes a hiding place: a beech and a fir with a cut hand, on the way to Klenovec. His defender pleads for mercy: he is young, and he has killed no one. Then comes the sentence. He shall be pierced with a hook through the left side and hung up – as an example to other such criminals.

No record of the execution is known. The town of Liptovský Mikuláš gives 17 March; other sources, 18 March 1713. Tradition places the execution site at Šibeničky, east of the town. Whether the sentence was really carried out on the hook – that, too, is in no record.

Where Juraj Jánošík is buried, no one knows. His silence does not save his friend. Martin Mravec is unmasked. According to the historian Marián Liščák, Tomáš Uhorčík is broken on the wheel on 21 April 1713.

In May, a manorial court has two helpers beheaded. And on 18 December, Jánošík's younger brother Ján is sentenced to death by hanging – for having helped him. His parents still appear afterwards in the Varín register. As godparents.

In 1715 and 1717. And yet the story is only just beginning. Soon after his death, a tradition takes shape. In 1785, the first printed mention appears.

In 1809, Bohuslav Tablic makes him a benefactor of poor students. In 1814, Pavol Jozef Šafárik writes of the robber who takes from the rich and gives to the poor. Then come the Romantics of Ľudovít Štúr's generation: for them, Jánošík becomes a symbol of freedom. In 1862, Ján Botto's verse romance The Death of Jánošík appears.

In the 20th century, every regime claims the hero for itself. Partisans bear his name; an ethnologist interprets him as a fighter in the class struggle. And films retell his story again and again – from 1921 to 2009. The magic shirt, the belt, the valaška from the fairies.

The old woman who scatters peas under his feet in the tavern. The dance beneath the gallows. All of this comes from songs, tales and poetry. None of it is in the records.

Only the sentence is documented – the hook. The records themselves have survived. The record with indictment and verdict survives in the original in the State Archive at Bytča, pages 563 to 567. Above Terchová, since 1988, has stood a seven-and-a-half-metre statue of sheet steel.

In 2004, around 75,000 people came to the Jánošíkove dni festival. The records show no fairy-tale hero. They show a young man from a mountain village whom war, comradeship and opportunity led into a robber band – and who died at twenty-five. That this short life became a myth is itself a piece of history.