Demographic Change

In the absence of adequate sources and methodology, the demographic changes in Transylvania after 1660 can only be estimated, but research has already revealed some critical indicators. From the Partium to the Székelyföld, the country was repeatedly ravaged by war between 1657 and 1661. When, in 1661, Chelebi Evlia accompanied Ali Pasha's army into Transylvania, he reported on vast areas, comparable in size to counties, being reduced to ashes, on entire villages being put to the sword, and on groups of 3,000–8,000 captives. The Hungarian, Székely, Romanian, and Saxon populations all suffered huge losses. The Partium and the counties of Kolozs, Doboka, Kraszna, Belső-Szolnok, and Közép-Szolnok were laid waste: 'Over an area of five or six miles around a village, one would not find a single hut left standing, nor a single man alive, for they had been abducted, slain, or felled by the plague [...] while most of the poorest folk died from starvation'.[38]38. A nagysinki országgyűlés [The Nagysink diet], 31 January - 24 February 1664. XXVIII. art. EOE 13, p. 291.

Driven by the waves of war, the country's population seemed to be constantly in movement. People fled from villages to towns, and from the towns to more secure regions; from the valleys of the Maros, Sajó, and Szamos up into the mountains, from south to north, down from the Máramaros to the Mezőség, from Transylvania to Moldavia and Wallachia, and from the Partium to Transylvania. Normally the survivors resettled in their home districts as soon as the war had passed, but, in certain regions of Transylvania, some villages remained deserted for years; those who {2-266.} had sought shelter in the forests and highlands were reluctant to resettle in the valleys. The period 1567-1661 had a deep demographic impact on the country.

Though reduced in area, Transylvania survived as a state. The peace facilitated reconstruction and a gradual economic recovery, which, in turn, drew new settlers from abroad. The problems and benefits of recolonization were assessed in 1672 by Miklós Bethlen: 'If we are smart, and if the prince and the Saxons agree, we will invite the oppressed poor from abroad to settle on our many deserted lands. That is how the Belgian Republic was built up, and that is how we could meet the needs of defence in the future as well as of taxation today.'[39]39. Miklós Bethlen's letter to Mihály Teleki, Szentmiklós, 7 February 1672. J. Jankovics, 'Bethlen Miklós Levelei', Régi Magyar Prózai Emlékek IV (Budapest, 1986), p. 247. In fact, Apafi must have perceived that the circumstances — notably a density of population lower even than in royal Hungary — favoured immigration: over these decades, people moved in significant numbers to the principality, mainly from Moldavia, but from Wallachia as well. In 1668, for instance, the population of several Romanian villages migrated to Transylvania. The voivodes harassed Apafi with demands that the 'runaway' villeins be repatriated; and the voivode Ghica, for one, was talking about not just a few individuals but entire groups. Apafi's attitude was reflected in the instructions given to the envoy he sent to Moldavia in 1669. He anticipated that the voivode would request 'the return of the villeins who fled from Moldavia to Transylvania'; judging both outright refusal and unconditional compliance to be counterproductive, Apafi ruled that bound villeins should be returned, but only on terms of reciprocity.[40]40. Prince Mihály Apafi's instructions to an envoy, 11 September 1669. OL, Agy, 2. doboz, Vegyes iratok. There is additional evidence of a deliberate settlement policy: villeins returning from abroad received material inducements, and the prince offered assistance to craftsmen moving over from the Partium. The Calvinist and Unitarian churches devoted much effort to drawing the newcomers to their congregations.

Until 1687, Transylvania was a country that offered security and jobs, and welcomed foreigners. Back in 1661, János Kemény {2-267.} had given shelter to Unitarians expelled from Poland; five hundred of them settled in Kolozsvár. After the loss of Várad, soldiers and irregular troops from the Partium sought refuge in the principality. After 1670, Transylvania served as a haven for dissidents and other refugees from Hungary: the teachers and students of the Sárospatak school, persecuted priests, Protestant families, and various groups of soldiers. The government's liberal commercial policy drew southern merchants to settle in Saxon towns; villages in and around Máramaros County were repopulated with Ukrainian villeins coming from the northeast.

The great migration wave lasted from 1664 until the 1680s. Then the flow changed direction. After 1687, large numbers of villeins moved to areas of the Great Hungarian Plain that had been reconquered from the Turks, never to return; entire villages migrated to Moldavia and Wallachia to avoid the new taxes and military reprisals; and several of Brassó's goldsmiths emigrated to the Romanian principalities.

The peripheral regions in the north, east, and south were the most severely affected by emigration, and the Székelyföld, Hunyad County, as well as the Fogaras district suffered from a rapid depopulation. The scale of the problem did not fail to alarm the Gubernium. Yet another wave of politically-motivated migration occurred in 1703-11; many people from the war zone west of the Tisza sought refuge in Transylvania, and there was also much internal migration, while, after 1709, groups of families as well as entire Transylvanian regiments moved beyond the Tisza or to Moldavia.

Apart from the political circumstances, there were other factors that contributed to the shifting state of Transylvania's population in these decades. The wars between 1657 and 1661 disrupted many hitherto homogeneous Hungarian and Saxon settlements and destroyed numerous long-established villages of Romanian farmers. Those — mostly semi-nomadic shepherds — who immigrated from Moldavia and Wallachia, or moved down from Transylvania's {2-268.} mountains to valleys, took some time to familiarize themselves with agriculture. The differences in lifestyle between the local population and new arrivals gave rise to social tensions that often led to the departure of one of the groups. The revival of manorial agriculture also led to domestic migration, for landowners would move their villeins from the heavily populated highlands to their scattered estates in the more sparsely-populated valleys. Stock-breeding in the highlands, which remained an important part of the country's economy, induced a perpetual movement of people, for shepherds continued to drive their flocks of sheep, which numbered in the tens of thousands, to winter pasture in Moldavia and Wallachia. Mean-while, there were several dozen Hungarian-inhabited villages in Moldavia, with an aggregate population of some ten thousand. Thus Transylvania remained a multi-national country, and while some regions were ethnically homogeneous, others had a mixed population.

The natural increase of the population was periodically cut by the plague. There was no decade in which the epidemic did not appear in one part or another of the country. The heaviest losses were incurred in the towns; in 1661, for instance, the plague's victims in Kolozsvár included four hundred students from the Unitarian College.

Changes in public health practices had a demographic impact, foreshadowing the approach of the transitional period. When the stresses of flight and captivity led to the death of the foetus carried by Miklós Bethlen's mother, Miklós suggested that an 'abortivum' be performed to save her life; yet neither the father, János, who was Transylvania's chancellor, nor the 'apothecary' were willing to tamper with fate. Infant mortality was high, and the poor health of the survivors is generally attributed to an appalling lack of hygiene, to 'cures' inspired by superstition, to the scarcity of doctors in the countryside, and to overconsumption of alcohol. A new disease, scarlet fever, appeared in the later decades of the century. Many former {2-269.} prisoners of war died upon their return, or a few years later, from mysterious diseases contracted during their captivity.

However, the first preventive measures began to appear. In some urban social strata, hygienic conditions were already better than the Hungarian average. Students who had fanned out to foreign universities thanks to Gabriel Bethlen's education policies brought home the knowledge of this 'jubilant century', and the results began to be felt throughout the country. In his famous medical handbook, published in Hungarian 'for the sake of the poor', Ferenc Pápai Páriz laid great emphasis on prevention.[41]41. Ferenc Pápai Páriz's preface to Pax Corporis (Kolozsvár, 1690). His recommendations — moderation in food and drink, exercise, fresh air, physical education for children — have stood the test of time.

In some social strata, the pattern of nutrition showed signs of change. Although one finds earlier references to the preservation of fruit, there was a growing supply of, and demand for juices as well as dried fruit, including apple, sour cherry, and pear. Significantly, lemons and 'lemon water' began to figure along with oranges on customs registers and shopping lists; it seems that Transylvanians had learned of the healthful properties of this fruit, much as the East India Company's captains had acknowledged that 'lemon water' offered an indispensable protection against scurvy on long sea voyages. Sugar also came into use, and maize began to supplant millet in the peasants' diet.

Transylvanian society was marked by a multiplicity of cleavages, but the size of the various social, religious, and ethnic groups can only be estimated. There were three broad divisions: a thin stratum consisting of the upper nobility, a middle stratum that enjoyed limited privileges and included the lesser nobility as well as burghers, and a mass of villeins who had few privileges, or none. The largest towns, Brassó and Szeben, had some 3–5,000 inhabitants. The growth of Kolozsvár was influenced by the fact that, after the loss of Várad, the town acquired the largest military garrison in Transylvania and became, in effect, a frontier fortress. The towns were ringed by populous suburbs and villages.

{2-270.} Social stratification did not wholly coincide with religious and ethnic divisions. Many of the nobles in Máramaros were Romanian; the lesser nobles and other citizens who formed the bulk of the large middle stratum so characteristic of Transylvania included Hungarians, Saxons, and Romanians. The arrival of nobles as well as of poorer people seeking shelter began to dilute the ethnic homogeneity of Saxon towns. In this period, one found Saxons, Hungarians, and Romanians alike in Kolozsvár's suburbs. Many ethnic groups and religious denominations were represented in the merchant class. It included Saxons, Hungarians, Romanians, Jews, and Greeks, as well as Armenians; the latter, most of whom immigrated in 1672, came to play a prominent role in Transylvanian commerce.

Only very rough estimates can be made of the population's ethnic distribution. Many people, mostly Romanians, had occupations that kept them in movement. The estimations vary widely; the proportion of Hungarians may have stood at 45–50 percent, of Saxons at 10–15 percent, and of Romanians at 30-40 percent; Ukrainians, Serbs, Armenians, and other nationalities accounted for the remainder. Many Hungarians, most of them Protestants fleeing persecution, were given shelter in Transylvania, in the late 1660s and especially in the 1670s. However, as both Apafi and Johann Troester observed, the number of Romanians showed significant increase. In a work published in 1660, Troester observed that, in addition of the 'three nations of Transylvania' — the Hungarian, Székely, and Saxon Ständ-Nationen — there was a fourth nation comprising the Romanians (Wlachen), whose numbers exceeded those of the Hungarians and Saxons in Hunyad County and the Fogaras region. Southern Transylvania was marked by large and solid blocks of Romanians, although David Prodan's investigations reveal that there was also a fairly large number of Hungarians in the villages of the Fogaras domain.

{2-271.} The loss of the Partium contributed to a reduction in Transylvania's population, to around 700,000–800,000. The density of population on this smaller territory was lower than in royal Hungary, but higher than in the Turkish-ruled areas, and probably higher than in Moldavia and Wallachia as well. Topography was the main determining factor in the territorial distribution of this population. Manpower was in short supply, and the reduction in population did not facilitate effective government or the satisfaction of social needs.