Personal vengeance against one tyrant becomes political only when it changes who owns what. The decisive step is handing the landlord's fields and oxen to the people who work them and ending sharecropping for good. Killing the master settles a grudge; abolishing the arrangement that made him a master changes the world.
When a community's freedom depends on one armed champion, it lasts only as long as he does. The rebel himself warns the villagers that all will be well while he holds the mountain, but if he is shot they must look out for themselves. Rescue from outside does not become self-rule until the community can defend it.
Removing an oppressor does not free people who still believe he can return. When villagers given land and freedom hear their old master is alive and planning revenge, their shared courage collapses at once. A system of domination survives in people's habits and fears long after its enforcer is gone.
A landlord who owns the grain store can rule by deciding who eats. Disobedience is punished by starvation, and children and women are beaten to keep everyone in line. Power over the harvest becomes power over every part of village life.
Banditry can carry its own tradition of honor: bandits who protect the poor and dispossessed, as opposed to those who prey on them or serve the landlords. A rebel earns the people's loyalty not by force alone but by keeping that code while others around him are drawn into corruption. Fighting a corrupt bandit leader can be a way of restoring the code, not breaking it.