To all appearances, the European revolutionary wave reached Transylvania by mail direct from Pest and Vienna. In Transylvania, because of the structure of power, legislation would have been the safest route to liberal reform; however, the fact that the diet was not in session in spring 1848 greatly influenced the nature of the 'craggy homeland's' response to the European challenge. On the other hand, the prospect of liberal–national reform in Hungary and the rest of the empire was greatly enhanced by the fact that the Pozsony diet was in session. Thanks to the spread of a revolutionary ethos in Europe, the balance of forces suddenly shifted in favour of the reform-minded opposition. Lajos Kossuth seized the opportunity and, with others, led a campaign aimed at the codification of liberal reforms. On March 3, the lower house of the diet demanded that a liberal constitution be introduced in all provinces of the monarchy, galvanizing the political opposition in Austria; ten days later, a popular rising erupted in Vienna. Metternich, the embodiment of the old order, was compelled to resign, and the monarch pledged a constitution. On March 15, the diet responded to reports that rebellious peasants were massing on the outskirts of Pest and in Bihar {3-221.} county by making a commitment to abolish serfdom. Pest became the fountainhead of liberal reformism not only for the rest of Hungary but for Transylvania as well. The reports of a peasant rebellion were ill-founded, but a revolution did break out in Pest-Buda on March 15. Unlike in some other European cities, it triumphed without resort to barricades and bloodshed; the military did not dare confront the huge mass of demonstrators. Galvanized by the spirit of revolution, the young radicals summarized two decades' worth of political demands in a twelve-point manifesto headed What does the Hungarian nation want? The last point was for unification with Transylvania.
After Vienna and Pest, Kolozsvár became gripped by revolution. News of the events in Pest spurred Transylvanian–Hungarian radicals to follow suit. On March 19, they addressed to the Pozsony diet a demand for union, responsible government, and constitutional guarantees; Kossuth had already urged that the Transylvanian diet be convened to rule on the foremost issue, unification. The elder János Bethlen once again displayed his skills as a tactician by persuading the conservative leader, Lajos Jósika, to endorse a joint declaration. Issued on March 20, the declaration not only reiterated demands for unification and reforms but also called for general and equitable taxation, equality before the law, and the abolition of serfdom. This was the first time that the goal of abolition figured in a broadly-publicized political program.
The struggles of the Reform Era had paved the way for a political convergence between liberal nobles and the urban middle classes. On March 21, János Bethlen participated in a meeting of the Kolozsvár city council, which endorsed Sámuel Méhes' motion that a petition be sent to the Gubernium, calling — in the spirit of the previous day's declaration — for constitutional reforms and the convening of a diet. Student-led demonstrations rang with enthusiastic calls for change. Governor József Teleki continued to sympathize with the liberals, and he allowed himself to be persuaded to submit {3-222.} the petition, with his endorsement, to the monarch; indeed, he circulated it to several heads of local government, inviting them to follow Kolozsvár's lead. The liberals had suffered a severe setback the previous year, but now they felt morally justified in their action and attempted to forestall conservative initiatives at the local level; after all, ever Lajos Jósika had signed the Kolozsvár declaration. How-ever, both liberals and conservatives understood that any implementation of the proposals for reform remained contingent on shifts in the balance of political forces within the empire.
From his Viennese vantage point, Chancellor Samu Jósika saw less cause for alarm that did the conservatives in Transylvania. He was confident that grass-roots faith in the 'good emperor,' the monarch's prestige and that of the army would suffice to contain discontent among the peasants. He urged the monarch to put off abolition of serfdom to March 1849, the date slated for this measure in the Austrian, hereditary provinces. Believing that the Hungarian revolution could be 'nipped in the bud only by Croatia,' Jósika was instrumental in the monarch's decision to bypass prescribed procedures and name Josip Jellačić governor (ban) of Croatia.[1] The latter would live up to these expectations, for, in the fall, he took the risky step of launching a military intervention. Meanwhile, Jósika also sought to turn Transylvania into a launching-pad for counter-revolutionary action.
In the event, Jósika's position was undermined by the developments in Hungary. The king appointed Lajos Batthyány prime minister, and this energetic politician proceeded, on 23 March, to promulgate the diet's act for the abolition of serfdom. This step forestalled any attempt to rally the peasantry against Hungarian nationalist objectives. On April 11, the monarch gave his consent to the diet's bills, converting Hungary from a feudal dependency to a liberal, constitutional monarchy. In the meantime, Jósika resigned as Transylvania's chancellor, claiming that the king had 'legitimated the jurists' rebellion in Pozsony and Pest' and opened the way {3-223.} for union between Transylvania and Hungary.[2] Indeed, a law had been enacted calling for the 'union, under a single government, of Hungary with Transylvania, which belongs to the Hungarian Crown.' The Hungarian government proceeded to implement a law, enacted at Pozsony in 1836, that provided for the reannexation of a northwestern strip of Transylvania, known as the Partium.
It seemed, then, that goals beyond the reach of Transylvania's own reformers would be achieved thanks to Hungary, and that Transylvania would not, after all, become a springboard for counter-revolution. Since the Pozsony law had also provided that union was contingent on approval by Transylvania's diet, the Viennese court tried to postpone convening that assembly. But Kolozsvár's example was soon followed by other Transylvanian towns. Communities that aspired to the status of self-governing municipalities rallied to the cause of union. They included Hungarian Torockó, which was mobilizing Romanian villages in its vicinity; Déva and Nagyenyed, which sought to be freed from the authority of their county; and even Dés and Fogaras, which were less impatient, but where both Saxons and Romanians hailed the Twelve Point manifesto of the revolutionaries in Pest. The Gubernium was deluged with liberal-inspired petitions. Even in previously conservative districts, county councils would threaten to dispatch their delegates to Hungary if the diet was not convened forthwith.
A spectacular episode brought this political ferment to an end. The nobles in Udvarhelyszék's council had decided to introduce general taxation, and, on April 10, the thirty delegates sent by the district to Koloszsvár declared that if a diet was not convened, they would return with 30,000 supporters. Faced with this threat, the governor took it upon himself to rule that the diet would meet in late May. The Hungarian liberals in Transylvania had taken a big step toward reaching their objectives. Municipalities set about electing delegates and drafting instructions that, as a rule, followed {3-224.} the spirit of the declaration and petition issued at Kolozsvár. Difficult times lay ahead, for what many feared soon materialized: Transylvanian society was thrown into turmoil, and Romanians as well as Saxons followed the Hungarians' lead in presenting national demands.
The Romanian national movement proved unexpectedly vigorous in its promotion of national as well as social demands; the emphasis varied according to momentary calculations of what was possible and desirable, but the two objectives became interwined. At first, it seemed that national antagonisms might be overshadowed by the general revolutionary euphoria. The thirty-odd Romanians among the two hundred apprentice lawyers at Marosvásárhely were spellbound by the demonstrations of the Hungarian townsfolk. An eyewitness, Alexandru Papiu Ilarian, reported that 'one had the feeling of being not in Transylvania, but in England.'[3] However, when the stirring verses that had sparked revolution in Pest, Sándor Petőfi's Nemzeti Dal (National Song), were declaimed in the central square, it became clear that the two nationalist groups could not agree on all points. The rhetorical question, 'Shall we be freemen or slaves?' raised no controversy, but the answer, 'We swear by the God of all Hungarians that we shall no longer be slaves,' was more divisive; Romanians wondered why they should swear by the Hungarians' god.
The young Romanians who were sought out, as representatives of their nation, by the Hungarians, refused to consider themselves — or their nation — part of a politically-unified Hungarian national entity. Claiming to speak on behalf of all Romanians, Papiu declared that he would accept the reunification of Transylvania with Hungary only on condition that 'the right of other nationalities to national existence and to the use of their dear mother tongue' was guaranteed and that 'no monetary compensation be required for the redemption' of serfs.[4] Avram Iancu, who would figure prominently in the subsequent events, reportedly cried out {3-225.} 'Free redemption or death!' as he departed from the town, followed by other young Romanians.[5] Some of them headed home, others for Balázsfalva. Papiu and a few of his supporters went to Kolozsvár, where they drafted a petition with the help of a young lawyer, Ioan Buteanu, who had campaigned for Hungarian liberals in the Kővár district during the 1846 diet elections. They demanded the 'restoration' of rights that, in their view, Romanians had once possessed and been deprived of: recognition as a nation and official use of their mother tongue in local government. On these conditions, they would accept the unification of the two countries and the designation of Hungarian as the official language. They also stressed, presumably in order to clarify the statements made in Marosvásárhely, that the abolition of serfdom had to be tied to state compensation for landowners. The petition was designed to mobilize the masses. In the Érc Mountains, it was widely disseminated at markets, and signatures were collected to give the campaign for national rights a broad popular base.
Thus, in March, most of the Romanians' policy initiatives were marked by qualified acceptance of unification. The one noteworthy exception was Simion Bărnuţiu, a onetime philosophy teacher at the Balázsfalva high school who, at age forty, after being dismissed by the bishop, had taken up the study of law at Nagyszeben. He vigorously opposed unification: 'May an eternal curse fall on any Romanian who dares to endorse to unification before his nation wins political recognition'; without such recognition, 'even a republic is no better than damnable tyranny.'[6] As a liberal historian later reflected, much of this statement was justified by history.[7] Among leading Romanians of the period, only George Bariţ decried, at times in mocking tones, the dredging up of old grievances and the insistence on political nationhood. In his Brassó newspaper, he analyzed the Twelve Points put forward in Pest and sketched out a comprehensive policy designed to secure the diverse objectives subsumed by the general demand for a political nation. {3-226.} Evoking the example of the United States and Switzerland, he argued in favour of a constitutional order encompassing fully autonomous and, if possible, ethnically homogeneous counties, where the public use of mother tongues was guaranteed; he pinned his hopes on liberalisation at the local level. Bariţ hoped that if the interests of Transylvania's Hungarians, Romanians, and Saxons could be reconciled, this model of multinational coexistence would facilitate the harmonization of the national goals of all Romanians and Hungarians. Bariţ, of all Transylvanians, must have been aware that revolutionaries in Wallachia were planning a Danubian confederation of the 'Swiss type,' based on a Hungarian-Romanian alliance, were, to this end, cooperating with the Polish émigrés in Paris, and perhaps also enjoyed the backing of the French government.
The future course of the Transylvanian–Romanian national movement would depend on many factors: on the assessement made by the several factions of the feasibility of their objectives and the prospects for political alliance, which, in turn, depended on the evolution of the Hungarians' 'nationalities policy,' and, not least, on their ability to generate grassroots support. In this respect, the fusion of national and social endeavour in the spring of 1848 marked a significant turning point.
Only in late March did the peasantry begin to appreciate the full import of the demonstrations mounted by the townsfolk and the county nobility. The sense of impending change revived some old prejudices. The county assemblies' pledges to abolish serfdom seemed only to deepen the peasants' mistrust of the nobility and their conviction that the nobles had suppressed the long-standing order of the 'good monarch' for the abolition of serfdom. On the other hand, there was also the occasional rumour, spread by peasants on their return from a visit to town, that the monarch had been deposed by the Germans, had 'sought refuge in our country and would no longer prevent landowners from doing well by the serfs.'[8] {3-227.} The abolition of serfdom in Hungary and the Partium had a tremendous impact among peasants in Transylvania. Citing this precedent, peasants in the western counties — with those in Hungarian villages often acting first — began to withold their services. In Inner Transylvania, the manifestos conveyed by young people to one parsonage after another served to arouse expectations among peasants that their dream would soon be realized. In the case of one particular manifesto, printed at Buda, the authorities managed to track down only a few copies, yet it was reported that 'several hundred' copies were being passed from hand to hand in Transylvania, including some in the Érc Mountains. When villagers in Drág (Kolozs County) heard that their priest had received some printed matter from Kolozsvár, they demanded that he read out the lot, and thus learned about the manifesto. They tended to skip over the main point, that unification would usher in the abolition of serfdom, and focus on the first few lines, which lent wings to their imagination: 'Romanian brethren! The sun of the Eternal Truth, Freedom is shining again... There are no more serfs or nobles, there are no more masters and servants. There are only equal men.'[9] This was enough to prompt villagers to threaten with death anyone who would claim to be their landlord. The manifesto was considered to be a 'charter of emancipation'; its message, according to a subsequent testimony, was that 'the Romanians' yoke had been smashed, their sun has risen, their heaven has come, for [they] will no longer serve any master.'[10] Thus began Transylvania's largest movement ever against compulsory labour, one that lasted for weeks and encompassed dozens of villages. In many places, communal lands, pastures, and woods were 'reoccupied.' Serfs even put their ploughs to the landlord's allodial fields if they believed that the latter had once belonged to the village. Rumours flew among the nobles that peasants believed the emperor would hand over to them all domanianal farmland. Despite the stimulus of the abolition of serfdom in Hungary, the Hungarian campaign for unification failed to inspire {3-228.} Romanian peasants — partly because of their traditional mistrust of the 'lords,' and partly because the Orthodox among them feared that this was just another attempt to impose a united Church. Ominously, only a few landlords made concessions to serfs, and many others 'wanted to resort to armed force to extract the obligatory services from their serfs.'[11]
The Gubernium requested the military command at Nagyszeben to place troops at the disposal of county authorities. An already anxious Puchner was relieved to be able to inform his counterpart in Temesvár that the peasantry's resistance to socage 'did not pose a threat to life or property, and thus did not require forceful reprisals.'[12] To preserve 'peace and order,' a few arrests were made, and martial law was proclaimed in several counties; gallows were erected on the outskirts of several villages to serve as a warning, but this measure often did more to incite than to dampen resistance.
The local protests in the counties coalesced into a peasant movement that became linked to the emerging Romanian national movement. Noting the spread of unrest, Aron Pumnul, a philosophy teacher at Balázsfalva, issued an appeal to rural church deans 'to meet, along with two persons from each village, at Balázsfalva' on April 30, the feast-day of St. Thomas. At this point even the bishop, Ioan de Leményi, felt compelled to back the initiative; he asked for official permission to hold a national meeting. In a delaying tactic, the Gubernium fixed the date at May 15, but by late April, several thousand people had already gathered, and thousands more prepared to attend the meeting, many in the hope that the abolition of serfdom would be officially proclaimed.
Indeed, there was a growing mood of expectation. The young people who disseminated manifestos came to be regarded as emissaries of the emperor, and they, in turn, realized that they could generate substantial support if they reinforced expectations and promised to assist peasants in their struggle against the landlords. {3-229.} The readiness of county authorities to lay charges of 'incitement' against the young activists only enhanced the latter's popularity. The peasantry showed a growing disposition to confront what it considered as the 'ruling class'; yet it was also prepared to trust members of that class — or those who were associated with it because they 'wore trousers' — who ostensibly supported their cause. Driven by a faith in the emperor's benevolence, the peasants came to regard some prominent figures as the personification of the heroic dispensers of justice evoked in their folk tales. They would commonly refer to Bărnuţiu as 'the King of Balázsfalva,' and to Iancu as a prince; even Andrei Şaguna, the young, Orthodox bishop who would diplomatically caution people to avoid rash action, and László Nopcsa, the onetime conservative lord lieutenant of Hunyad {3-230.} County, were spoken of as 'kings.' When peasants withheld their labour, they would often invoke the authority of one of these 'kings,' or of some other mysterious 'king' in disguise. The peasants saw a liberator in anyone who alarmed the landowners. Even in the Háromszék, some peasants would affirm that 'now it is the turn of our masters to become serfs, for the emperor has so decreed, and then the Russians will come and make us landowners.'[13]
The peasants' monarchism was a political illusion nurtured by feudalism. Their unwritten social code led them to regard monarchism as the best vehicle for expressing hopes and legitimating demands. Monarchism lent some coherence to peasant communities and movements, but it also exposed them to manipulation by those who opposed liberal reform.
The liberal nobility's call to action struck a more responsive chord among former nobles and free peasants who had been socially downgraded and marshalled by the state into service as frontier guards. The desire for social advancement soon gave rise to political slogans. On the initiative of the teacher Dániel Váradi and some noble landowners, the Hungarian border-guards at Rákosd, in Hu-nyad County, addressed — on their own behalf as well as on behalf of their Romanian comrades — a petition to the diet: 'Prior to March 15, we would have asked for restoration of our rights as nobles; now, however, we have come to understand the dominant spirit of the age and wish to seek a solution to our problems on the basis of the eternal and holy principles of equality, liberty, and fraternity.'[14]
In the counties, support for the liberals came from the towns, the lesser nobility, and a few villages. The liberals managed, not without some fierce struggles, to secure a much broader, if tenuous base of support in the Székelyföld. Students who returned to the Csík district from Marosvásárhely began to mobilize their fellows in Somlyó. Joining forces, they knocked down road signs bearing the two-headed eagle and campaigned for Hungarian national objectives. The local military commander could count on the frontier guards' traditional mistrust of 'gentlemen,' for the soldiers, who considered themselves to be free, feared that they might revert to serf status. Yet, despite the arrest of a few activists, he failed to consolidate his authority. His officers managed to mitigate the effect of revolutionary agitation, but they could not prevent frontier guards from supporting liberals for election to the diet.
The attempts to consolidate support for Hungarian national objectives were more successful in Háromszék, but the struggle was exceptionally fierce. In the Háromszék, the social structure was more complex, the economic division of labour was more advanced, and both agriculture and industry stood at a higher stage of development. There was also a long tradition of hostility to the frontier-guard institution, not only because of the onerous burden of military service, but also because it cut off opportunities for social and economic advancement. There was ample opportunity for political participation, since five municipalities (four 'taxed localities' and the szék, or district) had the right to send delegates to the diet; the extraordinary circumstances impelled thousands to attend the nomination meetings. As the process of reform matured, {3-231.} the pursuit of separate interests gave way to a consolidation of interests. The peasant sought equality with the soldier, the soldier with the nobleman (primor), and all were inspired by notions of Székely equality; in the end, these interests blended with the social and national objectives pursued by the liberals. One episode in this process had nationwide repercussions. Under the leadership of two young lawyers who had returned from Déva, Dániel Gál and László Németh, the Székely border-guards at Uzon refused to comply with orders that they take up positions in Saxon and Hungarian towns. Fearing that, as at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, they might be sent to the Italian front or even disarmed, they turned in their tracks and seized a shipment of arms destined for Brassó. After pledging allegiance to the Gubernium, the guards elected the two lawyers to represent Illyefalva in the diet. By this time, the commander at Nagyszeben, Anton Puchner, was so unsure of his authority that he refrained from taking forceful reprisals against the rebels. He vented his anger at the head of the Gubernium, warning that if people in Háromszék were not compelled to obey, he would march out of Transylvania and leave the country to its fate — a step that, needless to say, he had no real intention of taking.
Thus the young lawyers who returned to their home districts and resorted to political agitation helped reconcile popular local demands with national objectives — a new development, but one that had been maturing for a long time. These lawyer-activists served as a key link between the leadership and the mass base in both the Hungarian and the Romanian national movements. Thanks to their qualifications, social prestige, and comparative financial independence, the lawyers enjoyed greater scope that the similarly militant students and priests, although many of the latter, especially priests, campaigned vigorously and to some effect. The mutual political dependence of the lawyers and peasant communities helped to consolidate the popular base of the national movements.
{3-232.} By late April–early May, social conflicts began to aggravate the emerging confrontation between national movements. This new phase in Transylvania's revolutionary crisis was complicated by a covert struggle between the Hungarian and imperial governments. The latter, as will be seen, was disposed to exploit the 'Transylvani-an question' so as to constrain the Hungarians' drive for independence — if necessary, by using Transylvanian Hungarians as 'hostages' and by playing off the national movements against each other.