Policy toward Villeins and the Horea Uprising

On the question of villeinage, both the monarch and the majority of his government were motivated by unquestionably good intentions. In the Transylvanian context, there is no better illustration of the nature of Josephinism than the process whereby intentions gave rise to regulations, then to partial implementation.

Bruckenthal, as noted, had procrastinated on the matter of socage so as to preserve the alliance between the Hungarian–Székely and Saxon political elites. In the first year of his reign, Joseph II demanded that the governor produce a plan for the reform of socage, and one was duly submitted in autumn 1781, via the chancellery, to the Staatsrat. However, the state council found no justification for Bruckenthal's proposal to set socage at a higher level (two days a week with, and three days without draught animals) than that in effect in Hungary. The emperor forwarded the plan, along with the comments of the Hungarian court chancellery, to the Gubernium, expecting the latter body to take action or at least offer a counter-proposal.

There was no response from Bruckenthal and the rest of the Gubernium, nor, until 1785, any further action on the matter by the government. However, the emperor himself made an attempt in 1783 to terminate the status of perpetual villeinage. Although the initiative failed in its purpose, it did induce major change. The emperor was on a visit to Transylvania when, on 4 June 1783, he sent a message from Szeben instructing the Hungarian deputy-chancellor for Transylvania, Count Károly Pálffy, to quickly draft a decree for the abolition of perpetual villeinage. The chancellery managed to abort this initiative, although a decree issued on 16 July {2-708.} did bring some benefits to villeins: they were given the right to marry without permission of the landowner, to learn and pursue practical as well as intellectual crafts, and to dispose freely of their lawful property. The decree further provided that villeins could not be expelled from their plot or transferred by the landowner to another county, and that, pending a socage reform, they could not be required to provide services beyond those prescribed in the provisional regulations.

The reform of socage and the abolition of perpetual villeinage were still pending when, in fall 1784, Transylvania was shaken by a major peasant uprising. A number of factors helped to precipitate the event. As noted, relations between villeins and landowners became more strained in this period. Local problems precipitated a crisis in the Érc Mountains, the geographic heart of the Horea uprising. The Treasury's mountainous domain at Zalatna encompassed villages widely dispersed amidst vast forests, and many of their inhabitants had managed to avoid being registered for tax purposes. Out of personal spite, someone reported this massive tax evasion in 1772, and, after an investigation, the amount of tax levied on the domain grew twofold. However, the investigators also reported a recent increase in the villeins' burden of socage to two days per week, the imposition of additional tasks remunerated at a ridiculously low rate, and the cancellation of some customary privileges. The Treasury had thus tripled the revenues generated by the 7000-7500 villeins on the Zalatna domain. It was a long-established practice for villeins to turn to the monarch with their religious and other grievances. In 1779, a delegation followed this well-trodden road to deliver the Zalatna villeins' complaints in Vienna. Among them were two of the three leaders of the 1784 uprising: Horea and Ioan Cloşca.

Horea was born in 1730, at a settlement near Albák. Considering the lifespan of peasants, he was, at the time of the uprising, an old man possessed of much experience. His original {2-709.} name was Vasile Nicula; he probably owed the nickname Horea to his jovial spirit and his talent or love for songs. He wandered over much of Transylvania, first as a runaway, then as a self-commuted villein. Like most peasants of the Érc Mountains, he was a skilled woodworker. He worked as a carpenter on the construction of one of the finest surviving Romanian wooden churches in Transylvania, at Csizér. By 1784, he had accumulated — judging from his will — what was, by peasant standards, a fortune.

It was probably Horea's rich store of experience that led to his selection as a delegate. He paid several return visits to the imperial capital, notably after May 1782, when a riot broke out at the Topánfalva national fair. In 1781, the Treasury had withdrawn the already restricted publican's licence from the upper domain of Zalatna and put the pub out on lease. At the Topánfalva fair, agents of the leaseholders — two Armenian merchants — prevented people of the upper domain from exercising their right, customary on such occasions, to operate taverns; an irate mob thereupon smashed the wine-barrels of the leaseholders. The latter demanded compensation, and the manorial court at Zalatna delivered a series of death sentences and other heavy punishments. Horea participated in the riot but managed to escape. Along with Cloşca, he set off once again for Vienna submit the villeins' grievances. Horea even had an audience with the emperor — not an uncommon event, for Joseph II was in the habit of personally receiving villeins' petitions and offering some words of comfort and encouragement. However, in April 1784, Horea received further assurances from the chancellery that the Gubernium had been instructed to defend villagers on the Zalatna domain from the abuses of local and county officials, pending a ruling by the monarch. Armed with this knowledge, Horea and his associates asked for protection from the Gubernium and the county authorities. When this failed to bring a response, they turned for help to the military headquarters at Gyulafehérvár.

{2-710.} Meanwhile, another development was contributing to the restless of the peasantry. Wishing to reinforce the frontier guard, Joseph II had issued orders on 31 January 1784 to the Transylvani-an military command, the Gubernium, and the Treasury that lists should be drawn up of volunteers in the villages of the border districts. Action on the order was still pending when, in June 1784, peasants gathered for a fair at Gyulafehérvár. The misinterpretation of a proclamation sparked off a rumour that the registration had begun, prompting a rush of volunteers. By August, villeins from some eighty villages had signed up; many promptly stopped doing corvée for their landowners, and those who did not volunteer were roughed up. The situation was in many respects similar to that at the time of the organization of the Székely border guard, in 1762–63. Taking umbrage at the fact that the registration was being conducted without its knowledge or consent, the Gubernium proceeded to declare it null and void.

These were the circumstances in which Horea and his associated sought assistance from military command at Gyulafehérvár. When a new rumour spread, based on statements attributed to an officer, that Horea had been ordered by the emperor to take up arms, the stage was set for a confrontation. Gheorghe Crişan, a Zalatna villein who had run off to Záránd County, called upon the peasants of the Fehér-Körös Valley to gather on 31 October 1784, at Mesztákon. There, they took a decision to proceed to Gyulafehérvár and demand their enlistment in the frontier guard. They were intercepted by county officials and hajdú troops, and the violent clash marked the beginning of the uprising. Within a few days, peasants throughout southwest Transylvania had joined the rebellion. In Zaránd County, dozens of manors belonging to nobles were sacked by the insurgents, Hunyad County was up in arms, and the spark of rebellion spread to border districts of Hungary. In Alsó-Fehér County, Horea and Cloşca were joined by Crişan in leading the peasants of the Érc Mountains to revolt. The insurgents swept {2-711.} through Abrudbánya and Verespatak; there, and in other localities, those beaten to death included county and treasury officials, non-Romanian priests, and even some village magistrates.

The government was slow to take firm action. Governor Bruckenthal repeatedly urged the military commander, Franz Preisz, to marshal troops against the rebels, but, in the absence of clear instructions from the imperial war council, the elderly general opted to temporize. Meanwhile, as Bruckenthal's own mobile units moved aimlessly along the Maros River, the uprising spread in their wake. The other option, of calling the Transylvanian nobility into action, was dismissed by the governor. Acting separately, the military command and the Gubernium both initiated negotiations with the insurgents. The general assigned the task to Michael Bruckenthal, seconded by the Orthodox Bishop Nikitics; and this young scion of the Bruckenthal family passed on the risky job of talking with the rebels to Ioan Piuariu-Molnár. Meanwhile, in some districts, the nobility began to act in self-defence. At Déva, the nobles, assisted by a local contingent of hussars, crushed the rebellion and summarily executed fifty-six prisoners. There were clashes elsewhere between the nobility and the insurgent peasantry; at times, army units — mainly Hungarian and Székely hussars — acted on their own initiative to confront the rebels.

The reports that reached Vienna were late and contradictory, making it all the more difficult for Joseph II and government leaders to agree on a response. The debates in the central government were driven less by information than by a question of principle: whether first priority should be given to the security of the state or to policy regarding villeins. Initially, it was the former priority that prevailed. When, on 12 November 1784, the unified chancellery for Hungary and Transylvania notified Joseph II of the peasant rising, he immediately instructed the military high command to intervene, and had two regiments, stationed in Hungary, put on the alert. The monarch's tone was even more urgent in the order sent on November {2-712.} 15 to the military commander in Hungary, General Schachmin. The rebellion was 'most annoying and harmful', and it had to be countered with as much force as possible, for that was the best way to make an impression on the masses. A 'few of the most notorious scoundrels' should be summarily tried and executed on the spot.[16]16. O. Beu, Kaiser Josef II, pp. 35-60. He also instructed the chairman of the governing council in Hungary, Kristóf Niczky, to post a reward of 300 ducats for the heads of the rebel leaders; the government's first responsibility, wrote the emperor, was to protect the citizens and their property. The same day, similar instructions were set to Preisz and Bruckenthal.

When Joseph II heard of the exchange of letters between Bruckenthal and Preisz in the first days of the uprising, he lost his temper. How could the two men, whose offices were in the same town, resort to official correspondence in such an emergency, wrote the outraged monarch to the chief court chancellor for Hungary and Transylvania, Count Ferenc Esterházy, on 17 November; was it preferable that people be robbed or murdered, rather than that the governor or the military commander lose some prestige by paying a personal call on the other? After mulling over the matter, the emperor dismissed Preisz on 10 November.

By then, the issue of policy towards villeins had come to dominate the government's perspective on the uprising. Around 17 November, a proclamation of the Gubernium aroused the emperor's suspicion that abuses perpetrated by county officials had helped to provoke the outburst. By 19 November, he had come around to the view that the root cause of the rising lay in 'the diverse oppressive measures taken by landowners against their villeins'.[17]17. Ibid., p. 44. He dispatched a loyal Josephinist, Antal Jankovics, to conduct an investigation on the spot.

Yet the emperor's views were not free of ambivalence. When he was apprised on 20 November of the mass execution at Déva, he opined that the response of the nobles was quite understandable. {2-713.} The anguished monarch wrote to Bruckenthal that he would never have thought such things could happen under his rule, which was devoted to serve the common good and make everyone secure. He shrank from the prospect of bloody repression. Such a course was politically counter-productive: it would not calm the populace, nor make the nobility more secure, for the flames of rebellion would be rekindled at the first opportunity. He therefore ordered the suspension of summary trials, and, soon thereafter, called off the mobilization of the Hungarian nobles. The monarch was particularly disturbed by a report (later shown to be unfounded) that he received around 18 November, according to which the Hungarian nobles had mobilized Hungarian villeins to fight against the insurgents.

Joseph II concluded that the first step toward a political resolution of the problem would be the abolition of perpetual villeinage. (The emperor's memory seemed to fail him, for he demanded that his relevant decree be implemented, whereas such a decree had never been promulgated.) The next step would be to reform socage, a matter that had been dragging on for some fifteen years. On his instructions, Esterházy submitted a draft of the reform on December 1, and the emperor promptly amended it to reduce the amount of corvée.

However, the issue of state security, reinforced by the arguments of the military, soon returned to the top of the agenda. On 13 December 1784, the emperor sent off a flurry of instructions. The failure of peaceful measures showed that the uprising should have been taken more seriously from the start; the military would have to take decisive action.

In fact, by that time, the revolt had come to an end. Even before the new military commander, General Fabris, had reached Szeben, the headquarters had despatched two units, each numbering some 750–800 men, to the Érc Mountains. The first column, which moved along the Kaján Valley, was commanded by Baron Pál Kray (later a heroic participant in the wars against the French) {2-714.} and Lieutenant-Colonel Sztojanics; the second, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Schultz, headed through the Ompoly Valley toward Abrudbánya and Topánfalva. On 7 December 1784, Kray routed Crişan's forces at Blezsény, and, four days later, artillery fire from Schultz's detachment scattered the Zalatna insurgents. The rebellion was over. At the end of the month, Kray's troops, assisted by peasants from Nagyaranyos, managed to capture Horea and Cloşca.

Jankovics was entrusted with taking punitive measures. On 10 January 1785, the emperor, having been apprised of the arrest of Horea and Cloşca, instructed his commissioner to have the rebel leaders taken around the spots where they had perpetrated their worst deeds, and to summon villeins to assist at an execution that should be spectacular enough to serve as a deterrent. To demonstrate that this was the will of the emperor, and not of the Gubernium or the county officials, the execution had to be performed under the authority of Jankovics's commission. The more than six hundred people made to appear before the commission were divided into three categories. Jankovics set free those, numbering around three hundred, who had not joined the uprising of their free will nor committed serious offenses. Some 180 villeins who had chosen rebellion and engaged in looting received corporal punishment before being released. Of the 120 people who convicted of capital offenses, 37 were sentenced to death, and the rest imprisoned. Joseph II then commuted the death sentences of all except the three leaders. One of the latter, Crişan, committed suicide in prison. Horea and Cloşca met their gruesome end on 18 February 1785, at Gyulafehérvár; they were executed on the wheel, in front of crowd of villeins who had been assembled for the event.

Joseph II had feared that the insurgents were intent on massacring members of other ethnic groups. The uprising had erupted in a region where most, if not all villeins were ethnic Romanians, and where the landowning nobility and county officials were Hungarians by descent or assimilation. The rebels compelled captured {2-715.} noblemen to convert to Orthodoxy, and forced several daughters of Hungarian nobles to marry Romanian men. Such actions lent some credibility to the idea of a 'national' uprising, but in fact they were motivated more by religious than by ethnic or national sentiments.

Moreover, recent research has revealed that there were also Hungarians and Saxons — from villages in Alsó-Fehér and Küküllő counties, and even from the Mezőség — among those who volunteered for the frontier guard and who participated in the uprising, notably by attacking landowners; in some instances, Hungarian and Romanian villeins fought side by side. The rebel movement included Hungarian miners from Abrudbánya, Boica, and other mining towns, and some of them played a leading role; as well as Saxon villagers from the Kisenyed district well (even among the leaders) and people from the predominantly Hungarian Torockószent- györgy. In Torda and Kolozs counties, several Hungarians were convicted of having taken part in the uprising.

There is another reason why this movement, which was driven by the grievances of villeins, should not be construed as a Romanian national uprising: the bearer of an emerging national consciousness, the Romanian intelligentsia, failed to join it. Horea and his associates were denounced by Samuil Micu-Klein as 'cursed people who want to destroy the nobility'. Ioan Piuariu-Molnár did try to mediate, but the leading Romanian churchmen, be they of Romanian or Serb ethnic origin, merely tried to calm down the insurgents.

Joseph II was deeply shocked by the uprising, but the event only reinforced his belief that the problems of the villeins demanded urgent political solution. On 12 July 1785, he once again urged the Hungarian–Transylvanian court chancellery to take remedial action, arguing that the oppressive tactics of landowners and officials had been largely responsible for the outburst. On 2 August, he issued a decree reiterating the provisions in the decree of 16 July {2-716.} 1783 and declaring that villeins were no longer bound to the soil. Beyond this, there would be only marginal progress in the Joseph-inist policy towards villeinage.

The emperor failed to resolve the basic problem, which was that of socage. A preliminary investigation, launched in 1785, followed the Hungarian model in recording the villeins' land, their benefits and duties. With regard to the size of plots, Transylvanian authorities had not changed their measure of a full plot: this, in their view, consisted of 1.7–3.4 hectares (3–6 cadastral acres) of ploughland and meadows that produced four to six cartloads of hay. In endorsing this measure, the Hungarian–Transylvanian chancellery observed that, in Transylvania, there were no ninths or mountain taxes, and the value of land was high; and, further, that Romanian villeins needed no more than one to one and a half cadastral acres of ploughland to supply their families with the staple food, corn, and that they produced their own milk, cheese, and wool for clothing. The Staatsrat still seemed ill-informed when it debated the matter in 1787. Pál Izdenczy, who had served earlier in Transylvania, considered that the socage burdens in the country were excessive, but even he wanted to see the results of the census before deciding whether the villeins should be given as much land as in Hungary. Councillor Eger argued that the problem of socage could not be settled without information on the revenue generated by land, and the other members of the Staatsrat concurred. Joseph II left the matter in abeyance, and never broached it again.

Equally telling was the nature and outcome of attempts at partial reform. With regard to the levying of tenths and ninths, two provisions were made in 1786 to ease the villeins' burden. On 7 September, the emperor ruled that the tithe on pigs and bees should be collected only on the natural, annual increase in their number. One 6 November, the chancellery issued a regulation requiring {2-717.} landowners or their stewards to inform villeins of their dues in tenths or ninths within a day of the harvest's completion; failing which, the villeins could request that the levy be set by the village magistrate and his jurymen, and proceed to bring in their harvest. A complementary regulation, issued a few months later, stipulated that the landowner was free to choose on which plot he would begin to collect his tenths. The tug-of-war between contending interests was displayed even more vividly with regard to the villeins' rights to operate taverns. According to the basic royal ordinance, issued on 12 March 1787, landowners were free to market their wine all year round, and the villeins could sell wine by the barrel or by the mug, in their home or on the street. The only remaining restriction was that a villein could not operate a public house or inn, and could sell wine only at his place of residence or where he had vineyards; villages that owned a tavern could continue to run it, and where villeins and landowners agreed to preserve a customary arrangement with respect to pubs, they should be allowed to do so. The regulations issued in September 1787 and February–March 1788 were more restrictive. Neither party could abrogate a permanent socage agreement concerning pubs; where there was no such contract, the village should decide each year whether it wished to exercise the right granted in the regulation of 12 March 1787 and notify the county authorities. A subsequent regulation did make it possible to terminate a permanent contract, and allowed the village had to decide every six years whether it wished to exercise the right to sell wine all year round. Thus the comparative permissiveness of the March 1787 regulation was not fully reflected in subsequent practice.

Nor did local authorities and landowners always respect the spirit of three ordinances issued by Joseph II on 15 February 1787. The first of these required the landowner (or his agent, or several {2-718.} smaller landowners together) to designate one day each week when villeins could deliver their grievances in the presence of the local magistrate or jurymen; their deposition and other testimonies had to be recorded, and a response given within thirty days. If the villein did not receive a response within that time limit, or was dissatisfied with the ruling, he could appeal to the county; and if the parties could not be reconciled at that stage, the plaintiff could take his case to the Gubernium and, ultimately, to the monarch. The second ordinance spelt out the procedures for dealing with a disobedient villein: the landowner or his agent had to present the charge at the estate office in the presence of the village magistrate or two uninvolved parties, the judgment had to be recorded, and the villein could appeal (without postponement of the sanction); the county's assent was required if the sanction, detention or additional work, was for more than eight days, or if the landowner wanted to strip the villein of his plot; and villeins could not be made to pay cash fines. The third ordinance instructed county officials on how to deal with lawsuits initiated by villeins. The latter could be expelled from their land only in the most extreme cases; on their tours, district commissioners and sub-prefects had to investigate thoroughly charges of illegal measures against villeins, take action to protect the latter and provide redress, and punish the responsible landowners.

The ordinances had little practical effect, in part because landowners resented intervention by the state in matters of socage, and also because such attempts at regulation must have seemed unrealistic in the Transylvania of the 1780s and 1790s. For instance, an ordinance, dated 7 May 1787, required that the scale and acquittal of socage obligations be not only recorded by landowners or their agents, but also entered (by estate stewards) in registers kept by the villeins; though admirable in principle, such instructions were hardly likely to be followed. Reality was better reflected by an ordinance, dated 9 June 1788, of the Gubernium, {2-719.} instructing villeins to take complaints about their landowner directly to the chancellery.

Josephinist policy regarding villeinage was marked by an enlightened disposition to reform, an inadequate base of information, moralistic impatience, and a succession of failures. The reform of socage got nowhere, and the only concrete change was that villeins became free to move. The 1784 uprising had served as a warning, but the official response was based on a hasty and confused calculation of security and political factors. It is to the credit of Josephinism that, in the long run, the choice fell on political solutions, even if the results were meagre. In assessing this record, one must take into account the opinion of the peasants: despite everything, they regarded the emperor as their protector. In 1797, rumours spread through a few villages in Kolozs and Doboka counties, among people who wanted to join the frontier guard, that Joseph II and Horea were still alive. Such naive beliefs were common among peasants in the feudal era, but the legendary figures were few and far between.