Review of The Great Cattle War

The main plot is about power struggle between poor simple mountain peasants who have been raising milk cows on common land and a village bailiff trying to gain power driving them off the land claiming and old ducal parchment document states that only oxen are allowed there. But the local farmers also have a ducal document that states the opposite. Things escalate quickly as the bailiff uses the church to try and force the issue to the point that he sends soldiers to intimidate the farmers. In the middle are John Morton a farmer trying to raise his daughter Margaret and crippled son Mikey after his wife has died giving child birth and the bailiff whose son Archibald has just returned from the wars and wants peace. There is a side plot, like the Romeo and Juliet like love story between the bailiff's son and the leader of the farmers' daughter. It is based on the 1914 novel The War of the Oxen by Ludwig Ganghofer. It is a drama set against the backdrop of the War of the Oxen in the 1420s near Bavaria Germany.