Principality of Transylvania (1570–1711)

On 29 August 1526, the army of Sultan Suleiman of the Ottoman Empire inflicted a decisive defeat on the Hungarian forces at Mohács. John Zápolya was en route to the battlefield with his sizable army but did not participate in the battle for unknown reasons. The youthful King Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia fell in battle, as did many of his soldiers. As Zápolya was elected king of Hungary, Ferdinand from the House of Habsburg also claimed the throne of Hungary. In the ensuing struggle John Zápolya received the support of Sultan Suleiman I, who after Zápolya's death in 1540, occupied Buda and central Hungary in 1541 under the pretext of protecting Zápolya's son, John II. Hungary was now divided into three sections: Royal Hungary in the west and north, Ottoman Hungary, and the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom under Ottoman suzerainty, which later became the Principality of Transylvania, where Austrian and Turkish influences vied for supremacy for nearly two centuries. The Hungarian magnates of Transylvania resorted to a policy of duplicity in order to preserve independence.

Transylvania was administrated by Isabella, John Sigismund's mother, from 1541 to 1551, when it fell for five years under Habsburg rule (1551–1556). The House of Zapolya gained again the control of Transylvania in 1556,[22] when the Diet of Szászsebes elected Sigismund as prince of Transylvania.

Transylvania was now beyond the reach of Catholic religious authority, allowing Lutheran and Calvinist preaching to flourish. In 1563, Giorgio Blandrata was appointed as court physician, and his radical religious ideas increasingly influenced both the young king John II and the Calvinist bishop Francis David,[23] eventually converting both to the Anti-Trinitarian (Unitarian) creed. In a formal public disputation, Francis David prevailed over the Calvinist Peter Melius; resulting in 1568 in the formal adoption of individual freedom of religious expression under the Edict of Torda. This was the first such legal guarantee of religious freedom in Christian Europe, however only for Lutherans, Calvinists, Unitarians and of course Catholics, with the Orthodox Christian confession being "tolerated", with no legal guarantees granted.

Until 1691 Transylvania was ruled by Unio Trium Nationum, the three state-constituting socio-ethnical entities termed "nations", consisting of the Hungarian nobility, the Saxon urban settlers, and the Székely peasant-soldiers, while a significant part of the general population, consisted of Orthodox Romanians, remained deprived of any civil and political rights.[28][29]

The Unio Trium Nationum (Latin for "Union of the Three Nations") was a pact of mutual aid codified in 1438 by three Estates of Transylvania: the (largely Hungarian) nobility, the Saxon (German) patrician class,[30] and the free military Székelys.[31] The union was directed against the whole of the peasantry, regardless of ethnicity, in response to the Transylvanian peasant revolt.[31] In this feudal estate parliament, the peasants (whether Hungarian, Saxon, Székely or Romanian in origin) were not represented, and they did not benefit from its acts,[32] as the commoners were not considered to be members of these feudal "nations".[33]

The coalition of the "Three Nations" retained its legal representative monopoly under the prince as before the split of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom occasioned by the Ottoman invasions. According to Dennis P. Hupchick, though there were occasional clashes between the Hungarian plainsmen and the Székely mountaineers, they were united under the patronymic "Magyars" and, with Saxon support, formed a common front against the predominantly Romanian peasantry.[16]

Official censuses with information on Transylvania's population have been conducted since the 18th century, but the ethnic composition was the subject of different modern estimations.

Based on a work by Antun Vrančić (1504–1573), Expeditionis Solymani in Moldaviam et Transsylvaniam libri duo. De situ Transsylvaniae, Moldaviae et Transalpinae liber tertius, more estimations exist as the original text is translated/interpreted in a different way, especially by Romanian and Hungarian scholars. According to Romanian interpretations, Vrančić wrote about the inhabitants of Transylvania and about the Romanians: "the country is inhabited by three nations, Székelys, Hungarians, and Saxons; I would nevertheless add the Romanians, who – even though they easily equal the others in number – have no freedom, no aristocracy, no right of their own, besides a small number living in the Haţeg district, where the capital of Decebalus is believed to have stood, and who, during the time of John Hunyadi, a native of those places, were granted aristocratic status because they had always taken part in the struggle against the Turks. The rest of them are all commoners, serfs of the Hungarians, having no places of their own, spread all over the territory, in the whole country" and "leading a wretched life",[34][35][36] while in Hungarian interpretations, it is noted that the proper translation of the first part of the sentence would be: "...I should also add the Romanians who – even though they easily equal any of the others in number...".[37]

According to Dennis P. Hupchick, Romanians were the majority population in the region during the rule of Stephen Báthory (16th century).[38] In 1600, according to George W. White, Romanians, who were primarily peasants, constituted more than 60 percent of the population.[39] This theory is supported by Ion Ardeleanu, who states that the Romanian population represented "the overwhelming majority" in the age of Michael the Brave.[40]

On the other hand, Károly Kocsis and Eszter Kocsisné Hodosi argue that the Hungarians were the most numerous ethnic group before the second half of the 17th century, when they were exceeded by Romanians. They assert the following structure of the population: in 1595, out of a total population of 670,000, 52.2% were Hungarians, 28.4% Romanians, 18.8% Germans.[41] Around 1650, Moldavian prince Vasile Lupu, in a letter written to the Sultan, affirms that the number of Romanians are already more than the one-third of the population.[42] By 1660, according to Miklós Molnár, 955,000 people lived in the principality (Partium included) and the population consisted of 500,000 Hungarians (including 250,000 Székelys), 280,000 Romanians, 90,000 Germans and 85,000 Serbians, Ukrainians and others and reached its end-of-century level.[43]

In Benedek Jancsó's estimation, there were 250,000 Romanians, 150,000 Hungarians and 100,000 Saxons in Transylvania at the beginning of the 18th century.[44] In 1720, according to Károly Kocsis and Eszter Kocsisné Hodosi, out of a total population of 806,221, 49.6% were Romanians, 37.2% Hungarians, 12.4% Germans.[41]