1848–49 massacres in Transylvania

The 1848–1849 massacres in Transylvania were committed in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. According to the historian Ákos Egyed, 14,000 to 15,000 people were massacred in Transylvania in this period. The victims were composed of 7,500–8,500 Hungarians, 4,400–6,000 Romanians, and about 500 Transylvanian Saxons, Armenians, Jews, and members of other groups.[1]

Massacres of Hungarians

Throughout 1848 and 1849, the Hungarians in Transylvania became exposed to the opposition and repression of Romanians and Transylvanian Saxons. The Romanian massacres were justified as revenge for the Székely offensive against Romanian communities.

On 18 October 1848, Romanians attacked and murdered inhabitants of the village of Kisenyed (now Sângătin), located near Nagyszeben (Hermannstadt, now Sibiu).[2][3] Another important event of the 1848–1849 conflict was the massacre at Nagyenyed (today Aiud) (8–9 January 1849). During the event, Romanians massacred around 600-1,000 people in the town.[4] Additionally, the troops of Transylvanian Romanians organized by Avram Iancu, who were supporting the Emperor of Austria, fought the organized Hungarian forces from Zalatna (today Zlatna) and Körösbánya (Baia de Criş).[5]

During the fight of Zalatna in October 1848, about 640 citizens[6] of the town were killed including the teachers, priests, doctors and merchants. Thirteen thousand gold and twenty thousand silver coins were robbed from the town's treasury. The massacre was incited and led by local Romanian lawyer Petru Dobra.[7] Thirty Hungarians were killed in Boklya.[8] About 200 Hungarians were killed in Gerendkeresztúr (Grindeni)[8] and some 90 beaten to death near Marosújvár (Ocna Mureș).[9]

Massacres with recorded, mostly civilian Hungarian victims occurred in the following places:

Massacre Date Location Hungarian victims Notes
Algyógy massacre October 1848 Algyógy, Hunyad County (now Geoagiu) 85 ethnic Hungarians[10] Mostly civilians
Borosbocsárd massacre October 1848 Borosbocsárd, Alsó-Fehér County (now part of Ighiu) 73 ethnic Hungarians Mostly civilians[10]
Diód massacre October 1848 Diód Alsó-Fehér County (now Stremț) 25 ethnic Hungarians Local noble families[11]
Gyulafehérvár massacre October 1848 Gyulafehérvár, Alsó-Fehér County (now Alba Iulia) 42 ethnic Hungarians Mass torture, arson, and civilians massacred[10]
Gerendkeresztúr massacre October 1848 Gerendkeresztúr, Torda County (now part of Chețani) 200 ethnic Hungarians Civilians[10]
Székelykocsárd massacre October 1848 Székelykocsárd, Aranyos Seat (now Lunca Mureșului) 60 ethnic Hungarians Civilians[10]
Hátszeg massacre October 1848 Hátszeg, Hunyad County (now Hațeg) 15 ethnic Hungarians Civilians massacred on the order of the Romanian Orthodox priest.[10]
Marosújvár massacre October 1848 Marosújvár, Alsó-Fehér County (now Ocna Mureș) 90 ethnic Hungarians Civilians living in the town[10][12]
Mikeszásza massacre October 1848 Mikeszásza, Alsó-Fehér County (now Micăsasa) 150 ethnic Hungarians All locals except for one family were massacred[13]
Kisenyed massacre 14 October 1848 Kisenyed, Alsó-Fehér County (now Sângătin) 140–175 ethnic Hungarians Civilians[12]
Zalatna massacre 22–24 October 1848 Zalatna, Alsó-Fehér County (now Zlatna) 700 ethnic Hungarians [14] All the Hungarian civilians fled from the town but were raided near the village Presaca Ampoiului and were all massacred. The town was completely destroyed[10][15][16]
Magyarigen massacre 29 October 1848 Magyarigen, Alsó-Fehér County (now Ighiu) 200 ethnic Hungarians The entire Hungarian population of the village, except for the Hungarian priest was massacred.[17][18]
Boklya massacre 30 October 1848 Boklya, Bihar County, (now Bochia) 30 ethnic Hungarians[10] Mostly civilians
Felvinc massacre 13 November 1848 Felvinc, Aranyos Seat, (now Unirea) 200 ethnic Hungarians[10] The whole village was destroyed and most civilians massacred
Nagyenyed massacre 8–17 January 1849 Nagyenyed, Alsó-Fehér County (now Aiud) 600–1,000 ethnic Hungarians[4] Mostly civilians. The whole city with the ancient Bethlen College was burned and destroyed.[4][15]Mass rape and torture.[19]
Alsójára massacre 15 January 1849 Alsójára, Torda County (now Iara) 150 ethnic Hungarians Civilians[20]
Borosbenedek massacre January 1849 Borosbenedek, Alsó-Fehér County, (now Benic) 400 ethnic Hungarians[10] By the order of the Romanian Greek Catholic priest, the entire Hungarian population was wiped out[15]
Hari massacre January 1849 Hari, Alsó-Fehér County (now Heria) 18 ethnic Hungarians
Abrudbánya massacre 9 and 17 May 1849 Abrudbánya, Alsó-Fehér County (now Abrud) 1100–1200 ethnic Hungarians Mass torture and rape. Victims were mostly local miners and town officers and their whole families.[10]
Bucsesd massacre 9 May 1849 Bucsesd, Hunyad County (now Buceș) 200 ethnic Hungarians[10]

This table contains only the recorded victims, however, the exact number of deceased civilians is hard to determine. There are several dozens of villages all over Transylvania where the number of massacred locals (predominantly Hungarians) is unknown. Furthermore, these numbers might not include those who did not perish in the massacres per se but during their imprisonment, fleeing, disappearance or forced resettlement to Naszód, Hátszeg, or Monorfalva by the Romanians.[21]

Soon after the war, in 1850, the Habsburg court conducted a census of the victims. However, the authenticity of this census has been questioned and heavily criticized over time, as the authorities only conducted the census in Romanian and Saxon-populated areas and ignored even mentioning some of the largest massacres against Hungarian civilians in Transylvania, such as Nagyenyed, Abrudbánya or Zalatna.[22]

Among the victims of the Romanian massacres also relatives of important contemporary Hungarian personalities were to be found. Mária, the sister of the Hungarian dramatist Imre Madách was caught together with her husband and her son, being all killed by the Romanian insurgents,[23] and thrown in front of pigs to be eaten.[24] Africa's first female researcher, Florence Baker's (her original, Hungarian, name was Sass Flóra) parents and brothers and sisters were killed by the Romanian militia, led by Axente Sever in Nagyenyed (now Aiud) during the massacre of the Hungarian population of the town at 8 January 1849.[25]

Massacres of Romanians

Beginning: the clash in Mihálcfalva

Encouraged by the enlightened declarations of the revolutionaries of Pest about the liberation of all serfs in Hungary and the abolition of feudalism, as well as by the declarations of the Romanian national assemblies on 30 April and 15 May in the Transylvanian town of Balázsfalva (now Blaj), villagers in the southern Transylvanian Mihálcfalva (now Mihalț) illegally occupied a parcel of land belonging to the Esterházy family. On 1 June 1848, an imperial committee was appointed in Gyulafehérvár (now Alba Iulia) and sent out to Mihálcfalva (now Mihalț) to investigate the illegalities that took place in May. However, thousands of armed peasants from Obrázsa (now Obreja), Oláhcsesztve (now Cistei), and Alsókarácsonfalva (now Crăciunelu de Jos) gathered against them and refused their entry to the village. On the next day, 2 June 1848, an official regiment was sent from Gyulafehérvár by Anton von Puchner, commander in chief of the Austrian troops in Transylvania to disarm the armed peasants and guarantee the safety of the imperial committee during their investigation. However, the peasants resisted and the resulting armed clash killed 12 Romanian peasants and 1 Hungarian soldier. This was the first Transylvanian armed conflict in 1848.

An important strategic step of Anton von Puchner in the days leading up to the clash was his specific choice for a Székely Hungarian regiment to be sent against the armed Romanian peasants. In doing so, Anton von Puchner played a major role in the exacerbation of political-ethnic differences in the region and in the further radicalization of both Romanian and Hungarian peasants in Transylvania. As the power of Austrians weakened due to the initial successes of the Austrian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, and Hungarian revolutionaries throughout the Habsburg Empire, the events in Mihálcfalva were published in the pro-imperial newspaper Der Siebenbürger Bote and were interpreted as a radical Hungarian assault against Romanian civilians,[26] despite the fact that at the time of the conflict, the Székely frontier guards were still directly subordinate to the imperial court and to Anton von Puchner, commander in chief of the Transylvanian Austrian troops. The event, followed by the pro-imperial propaganda further boosted unrest and hostility in the region, and largely contributed to the mass-armament of Transylvanian Romanians and to the organization of the second national assembly in the town of Balászfalva in September 1848.[27]

Further incidents

In the autumn of 1848, dozens of Romanians from a village in Northern Transylvania who opposed the forced conscription into the Hungarian army were killed after the attack of a 200-man force.[28] On 10 September 1848 Hungarian military units from Arad killed 3 Romanians in Nadab (now part of Chișineu-Criș) after a conflict with several thousand locals armed with scythes who refused recruitment into the Hungarian Army, while other were imprisoned in Nagyvárad (now Oradea), Arad and Szeged.[29][30] On 12 September 1848, in the village Aranyoslóna (now part of Luna), the count of Torda, Miklós Thorotzkai, gave the order to fire into the crowd that opposed recruitment into the Hungarian army, killing 30 people[31] and wounding several tens.[29] On 18 October 1848 one Romanian peasant in Almás (now Almaș) was executed for refusing to join the Hungarian army. Additionally, Avram Iancu distributed copies of the "emperor's message" among village priests in the region of the Apuseni Mountains. The command called all minorities across the Hungarian Kingdom to get armed and resist the Hungarian freedom fight. A total of nine Romanian priests from 6 villages were found guilty for having read out this message in front of the villagers, and were charged with public incitement and executed.[30] After entering Balázsfalva on 18 January 1849, Hungarian troops looted the town[29] and reportedly committed plundering against the local Romanian population[26] but a massacre did not take place. 6 people from Butyin (now Buteni), 1 person from Keszend (now Chisindia), and 1 person from Barza (now Bârsa) were killed for opposing the plundering in the region, committed by the Hungarian military.[30]

Timeline of massacres of Romanians by Hungarians
Massacre Date Location Romanian victims Notes
Mihálcfalva conflict 2 June 1848 Mihálcfalva, Alsó-Fehér County (now Mihalţ) 12 armed Romanians[10] Armed clash with the Hungarian-speaking imperial regiment of Anton von Puchner
Nadab massacre 10 September 1848 Nadab, Arad County (now Nădab) 3 [29] Killed for opposing conscription
Aranyoslóna massacre 12 September 1848 Aranyoslóna, Torda County (now Luna) 30 [31] Fire in the crowd that refused military recruitment
Butyin massacre ? Butyin, Arad County (now Buteni) 8 [30] Civilians massacred for opposing the plundering of Hungarian troops

According to the official lists (that were published in the newspaper Wiener Zeitung) 4425 men, 340 women and 69 children were killed without trial by the Magyar military tribunals in Transylvania, exclusive of the ones who died in open fighting. 4425 of the victims appear to have been Romanians, 165 Magyars, 252 Saxons and 72 Jews, Gypsies[32] According to another estimation. 40,000 Romanians perished, however difficult to confirm with statistical data.[33]

See also

Notes
  1. Egyed Ákos: Erdély 1848–1849 (Transylvania in 1848–1849). Pallas Akadémia Könyvkiadó, Csíkszereda 2010. p. 517 (Hungarian)"Végeredményben úgy látjuk, hogy a háborúskodások során és a polgárháborúban Erdély polgári népességéből körülbelül 14 000-15 000 személy pusztulhatott el; nemzetiségük szerint: mintegy 7500–8500 magyar, 4400–6000 román, s körülbelül 500 lehetett a szász, zsidó, örmény lakosság vesztesége."
  2. Wenkstern (1859), pp. 156–159
  3. The British Quarterly review, February and May, 1851 VOL.XIII, p. 27
  4. Gerő, Patterson (1995), p. 102
  5. Berend (2003), p. 112
  6. Fejőszék Százhatvan éve irtották ki Nagyenyedet a román felkelők
  7. Róbert Hermann, Gábor Bona: 1848–1849 a szabadságharc és forradalom története Videopont, 1996 p. 188
  8. Gracza, "Az 1848-49-iki magyar szabadságharcz története" volume II p.424
  9. Gracza, "Az 1848-49-iki magyar szabadságharcz története" volume II p.422
  10. Gracza György, History of the 1848-49 Hungarian War of Independence, Budapest, 1894, Volume II, pp. 424.
  11. Verzeichniss der, während der jüngsten Revolution im Kronlande Siebenbürgen auf verschiedene Weise gefallenes Menschenopfer. Wien, 1851, 24–25. o.
  12. Domokos Pál Péter: Rendületlenül, Eötvös Kiadó-Szent Gellért Egyházi Kiadó, 1989, 33.-34. old.
  13. Jakab Elek, The War of Independence, Budapest, 1894, Volume II, pp. 385.
  14. (Hungarian, German)Dr Ignatz Reinbold, Memories of Dr Ignatz Reinbold Chamber Doctor of the Town of Zlatna Accessed: 18 June 2020
  15. Jancsó Benedek, History and Current State of Romanian Irredentist Movements, Budapest, 1896, Volume II, pp. 682.
  16. Horváth Mihály, History of the War of Independence of Hungary, Budapest, 1894, Volume II, pp. 405.
  17. Mátyás Vilmos: Utazások Erdélyben, Panoráma, 1977, 56. old.
  18. Gracza György, History of the 1848-49 Hungarian War of Independence, Budapest, 1894, Volume II, pp. 420.
  19. Kemény Gábor, Nagy-Enyednek és vidékének veszedelme 1848-49-ben : történeti vázlat, Pest, 1863, pp. 347-348.
  20. Gracza György, History of the 1848-49 Hungarian War of Independence, Budapest, 1894, Volume III, pp. 433.
  21. Szilágyi Farkas: Alsó Fehér vármegye 1848-49-ben. In. Alsó Fehér vármegye monmográfiája III. 1. rész, Nagyenyed 1898
  22. Egyed Ákos: Erdély 1848–1849 (Transylvania in 1848–1849). Pallas Akadémia Könyvkiadó, Csíkszereda 2010. p. 507-509
  23. Palágyi Menyhért, / Madách Imre élete és költészete, Athenaeum 1900, p. 75.
  24. / Madách Imre a szabadságharcban, A Nógrád Megyei Levéltár történeti blogja
  25. Komáromi Csaba, / Magyarok a fekete földrészen, Belvedere Meridionale 2010/XXII. 1–2., p. 55.
  26. (Romanian) Istoria României. Transilvania , coord. Anton Drăgoescu, Fundaţia "George Bariţiu", Cluj-Napoca, 1997 – Chapter VIII
  27. Hermann R. (ed.). Az 1848-49. évi forradalom és szabadságharc története. pp. 79–81.
  28. Freifeld p.73
  29. Ela Cosma. Cronologia anilor 1848/1849 History Institute „George Bariţiu", Cluj-Napoca. "10 septembrie 1848, Nădab – conflictul dintre câteva mii de români, înarmaţi cu coase, refuzând recrutarea în armata ungară, şi unităţile militare din Arad, ce omoară şi ucid mai mulţi răsculaţi."
  30. (Romanian) Dumitru Suciu, Soldaţi fără uniformă ai Landsturmului românesc şi starea protopopiatelor ortodoxe din Transilvania după Războiul Naţional din 1848–1849 p. 11-12. Accessed 2013-06-28. Archived 2013-06-30.
  31. "În toamna anului 1848 prima ciocnire violentă în care au căzut împreună ţărani români şi maghiari a avut loc în comitatul Turda, la Luna Arieşului, când comitele Thorotzkai Miklós a dat ordin să se tragă în mulţimea care se opunea recrutărilor. La 12 septembrie 1848 cad 30 de oameni" Gelu Neamţu. Maghiari Alături De Revoluţia Română De La 1848–1849 Din Transilvania. "George Bariţ" History Institute Cluj-Napoca
  32. Robert William Seton-Watson. A History of the Roumanians: From Roman Times to the Completion of Unity
  33. http://www.historica-cluj.ro/anuare/AnuarHistorica2019/05_Balog.pdf

References
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