All actions entail consequences and none of us are free to do anything we so please without repercussions. Even today, there are things I might choose to do that would result in my death.

Such a definition of freedom being therefore completely inadequate in defining slavery due to its failure to actually allow a category distinct from slaves and therefore rendering the term as an identifier a failure, this is clearly not the definition that was used.

Being free men, peasants were allowed to come and go as they pleased, to own things, including land, and were entitled to justice through the local law (the fairness and corruption of the law or its officials being irrelevant to this issue).

But slavery, incidentally, is not defined by the lack of freedom, though lack of freedom is a consequence of slavery. What defines a slave is that they are property of someone else, they are entirely under the domination of another. Peasants aren't slaves.