{2-698.} The Problem of Socage

Nor was there much progress, over the first decade of enlightened absolutism, in altering the situation of villeins. In the preceding period, the 'Certain Points' had confirmed, with slight amendment, earlier legal provisions regarding socage, thus leaving the problem essentially unresolved.

The government could not, and, in some measure, did not wish to find alternatives to the status quo. To be sure, in June 1770, the queen became concerned at reports that on the eve of the Russo–Turkish war, villeins in Moldavia had won relief from socage; fearing that this might induce Transylvanian villeins to emigrate, she charged the chairman of the Gubernium, General O'Donel, along with Samuel Bruckenthal and Bishop Antal Bajtay to develop without delay a Transylvanian version of the socage reform enacted in Hungary. Over the next three years, she and Joseph II repeatedly urged Bruckenthal, the de facto head of the Transylvanian court chancellery, to present a proposal. (In the meantime, O'Donel had departed, and Bajtay, who had resigned as bishop, died on his way back to Hungary.) From Bruckenthal, the monarch got nothing but vague excuses for the delay; the real cause for delay, as noted by the historian Jenő Berlász, was that Bruckenthal relied on support from the Hungarian landowning nobility for his defence of Saxons against the Treasury's demands. Finally, in spring 1773, Joseph II ordered Bruckenthal to deliver a plan forthwith. The draft prescribed that villeins plots consist of 1.7–3.4 hectares (3–6 cadastral acres) of ploughland and an unspecified area of grassland. The weekly socage obligations of villeins holding a full plot would remain as set out in the regulations of 1714 and 1747: three days of service with, and four days without draught animals. Villeins holding smaller plots would owe proportionately less service. A lower scale of services applied to cotters.

{2-699.} Prior to final consideration of the Bruckenthal plan, Joseph II went on a tour of Transylvania and presented an official report on his findings to the state council. The monarch's conclusion was that a socage reform should be implemented without delay, and he proposed that a socage commission be sent out, consisting of Saxon commissioners for the counties and Székely széks, and Hungarian commissioners for the Saxon széks. In the event, the monarch's initiative led the Staatsrat to discuss, in July 1774, the proposal presented by Bruckenthal. The councillors were talented and enlightened men, but they had little understanding of the state of villeinage in Transylvania. In the end, Bruckenthal was instructed to have another plan drawn up by the Gubernium.

Bruckenthal, who had just been named chairman of the Gubernium, was now pressed from other directions as well to act without delay. In 1775, villeins from numerous villages in Doboka and Belső-Szolnok counties refused further service to their landowners: they had been told by non-commissioned officers of the Haller infantry regiment — who were evidently aware of the reform in Hungary — that the queen had reduced socage obligations to one day's manual service per week. The peasants were prevailed upon to calm down, and the Gubernium developed another socage plan that essentially reiterated the earlier proposal for: 1.7–3.4 hectares of ploughland, grassland sufficient for 4–6 cartloads of hay, and corvée as prescribed in 1714.

The members of the Staatsrat noted regretfully that the new plan differed little from the one presented by Bruckenthal in 1773, but they endorsed the proposed scale of socage services. Oddly enough, it was a conservative councillor, Hatzfeld, who drew attention to the fact that villeins' plots were considerably larger in Hungary than in Transylvania. The well-intentioned but tactically inept Joseph II then made a patently unrealistic proposal: the queen should dispatch to Transylvania a couple of commissioners who had done a good job in the Hungarian reform. They would be {2-700.} charged with conducting a similar reform, taking into account local conditions, and according to her prescriptions. For her part, Maria Theresa refused to rule on the issue of plot size until the question of socage had been settled.

In spring 1776, the Gubernium's socage committee allowed that while it preferred to keep the villeins' plots limited to 3.4 hectares, it might be willing to raise the ceiling to 4.5 hectares (8 cadastral acres); and that the weekly corvée could be reduced to two days, but villeins would have to spend additional time carting, cutting cordwood, spinning, weaving, and eradicating beasts of prey. Some councillors did express a preference for three days of socage without, and two days with draught animals, and this was the version approved by the Transylvanian court chancellery, along with the 3.4 hectare limit on plots. In the Staatsrat, Löhr and Hatzfeld backed the chancellery's proposal, but councillor Kressel argued that where the quality of land was poor, plot sizes should be increased by one or two cadastral acres, while councillor Gebler recommended that the higher socage proposal, made by a minority on the Gubernium and endorsed by the chancellery, should be ignored. The queen accepted the arguments of Kressel and Gebler — and then, nothing further was done in her lifetime to resolve the problem of socage. Eleven years passed without any tangible progress.