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1848–1849 massacres in Transylvania

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The 1848–1849 massacres in Transylvania were committed in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. According to Hungarian historian Ákos Egyed, 14,000 to 15,000 people were massacred in Transylvania in this period. The victims comprised 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

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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 Criș).[5]

Monument to the victims of the Zalatna (Zlatna) massacre.

During the fight of Zalatna in October 1848, about 640 citizens[6] of the town were killed including 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]

Timeline of massacres of Hungarians

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

Massacre Date Location County Now named Victims Notes
Algyógy massacre October 1848 Algyógy Hunyad County Geoagiu 85[10] Mostly civilians
Borosbocsárd massacre October 1848 Borosbocsárd Alsó-Fehér County part of Ighiu 73 Mostly civilians[10]
Diód massacre October 1848 Diód Alsó-Fehér County Stremț 25 Local noble families[11]
Gyulafehérvár massacre October 1848 Gyulafehérvár Alsó-Fehér County Alba Iulia 42 Mass torture, arson, and civilians massacred[10]
Gerendkeresztúr massacre October 1848 Gerendkeresztúr Torda County part of Chețani 200 Civilians[10]
Székelykocsárd massacre October 1848 Székelykocsárd Aranyos Seat Lunca Mureșului 60 Civilians[10]
Hátszeg massacre October 1848 Hátszeg Hunyad County Hațeg 15 Civilians massacred on the order of the Romanian Orthodox priest.[10]
Marosújvár massacre October 1848 Marosújvár Alsó-Fehér County Ocna Mureș 90 Civilians living in the town[10][12]
Mikeszásza massacre October 1848 Mikeszásza Alsó-Fehér County Micăsasa 150 All locals except for one family were massacred[13]
Kisenyed massacre 14 October 1848 Kisenyed Alsó-Fehér County Sângătin 140–175 Civilians[12]
Zalatna massacre 22–24 October 1848 Zalatna Alsó-Fehér County Zlatna 700[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 Ighiu 200 The entire Hungarian population of the village, except for the Hungarian priest was massacred.[17][18]
Boklya massacre 30 October 1848 Boklya Bihar County Bochia 30[10] Mostly civilians
Felvinc massacre 13 November 1848 Felvinc Aranyos Seat Unirea 200[10] The whole village was destroyed and most civilians massacred
Köpec massacre 9 December 1848 Köpec Háromszék County Căpeni 51[19] After the imperial victory of Hídvég over the Székelys from the Háromszék county, the Austrians sent the Romanian and Saxon insurgents, who were supporting them in the battle, to pillage the village. The insurgents burned down the village, killing 51 people, among them even a retired k.u.k. officer, who was living there.[19]
Hétfalu massacre 23 December 1848 Hétfalu Brassó County Seven Villages 55[20] On 23 December 1848 a huge Romanian insurgent force arrived, burned, and pillaged the localities, killing 55 Hungarian Csángó inhabitants.[20]
Nagyenyed massacre 8–17 January 1849 Nagyenyed Alsó-Fehér County Aiud 600–1,000[4] Mostly civilians. The whole city with the ancient Bethlen College was burned and destroyed.[4][15] Mass rape and torture.[21]
Alsójára massacre 15 January 1849 Alsójára Torda County Iara 150 Civilians[22]
Borosbenedek massacre January 1849 Borosbenedek Alsó-Fehér County Benic 400[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 Heria 18
Abrudbánya massacre 9 and 17 May 1849 Abrudbánya Alsó-Fehér County Abrud 1,100–1,200 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 Buceș 200[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.[23]

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.[24]

Among the victims of the Romanian massacres, important Hungarian personalities or their relatives 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,[25] and thrown in front of pigs to be eaten.[26] Africa's first female researcher, Florence Baker's (her original, Hungarian, name was Flóra Sass) parents and brothers and sisters were killed by the Romanian militia, led by Ioan Axente Sever in Nagyenyed (now Aiud) during the massacre of the Hungarian population of the town at 8 January 1849.[27]

Massacres of Romanians

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Beginning: the clash in Mihálcfalva

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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 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. Other sources put the number of Romanian peasants shot dead at 14, with 50 other wounded, many of whom subsequently died.[28] 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,[29] 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.[30]

Further incidents

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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.[31] 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.[32][33] 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[34] and wounding several tens.[32] 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 Revolution. 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.[33] After entering Balázsfalva on 18 January 1849, Hungarian troops looted the town[32] and reportedly committed plundering against the local Romanian population[29] 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.[33]

Timeline of massacres of Romanians by Hungarians

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Massacre Date Location Romanian victims Notes
Mihálcfalva conflict 2 June 1848 Mihálcfalva, Alsó-Fehér County (now Mihalț) 12[10] or 14[28] Armed clash with the Hungarian-speaking Habsburg imperial regiment of Anton von Puchner
Nadab massacre 10 September 1848 Nadab, Arad County (now Nădab) 3[32] Killed for opposing conscription
Aranyoslóna massacre 12 September 1848 Aranyoslóna, Torda County (now Luna) 30[34] Fire in the crowd that refused military recruitment
Butyin massacre 6 August 1849 Butyin, Arad County (now Buteni) 8[33] Civilians massacred for opposing the plundering of Hungarian troops

According to the official lists (that were published in the newspaper Wiener Zeitung) 4,425 men, 340 women and 69 children were killed without trial by the Hungarian military tribunals in Transylvania, exclusive of the ones who died in open fighting. 4,425 of the victims appear to have been Romanians, 165 Hungarians, 252 Saxons and 72 Jews, Gypsies and others.[35]

See also

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Notes

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  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. ^ a b c Gerő, Patterson (1995), p. 102
  5. ^ Berend (2003), p. 112
  6. ^ "Fejőszék Százhatvan éve irtották ki Nagyenyedet a román felkelők". Archived from the original on 1 February 2011. Retrieved 22 August 2011.
  7. ^ Róbert Hermann, Gábor Bona: 1848–1849 a szabadságharc és forradalom története Videopont, 1996 p. 188 [1]
  8. ^ a b 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. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. ^ a b 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 [2] Accessed: 18 June 2020
  15. ^ a b c 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. ^ a b Demeter Lajos: Háromszék 1848-ban, önvédelmi harca november 12. - 1849. január 5. között (kronológia) Archived 2023-04-29 at the Wayback Machine Acta2006. Határvidék 1762–1918 (2. rész), pp. 237
  20. ^ a b Veres Emese Gyöngyvér: A hétfalusi csángók 1848-49-es emlékhelyei Honismeret, 1999 (27. évfolyam) 3. sz., pp. 24-26
  21. ^ Kemény Gábor, Nagy-Enyednek és vidékének veszedelme 1848-49-ben : történeti vázlat, Pest, 1863, pp. 347-348.
  22. ^ Gracza György, History of the 1848-49 Hungarian War of Independence, Budapest, 1894, Volume III, pp. 433.
  23. ^ Szilágyi Farkas: Alsó Fehér vármegye 1848-49-ben. In. Alsó Fehér vármegye monmográfiája III. 1. rész, Nagyenyed 1898
  24. ^ Egyed Ákos: Erdély 1848–1849 (Transylvania in 1848–1849). Pallas Akadémia Könyvkiadó, Csíkszereda 2010. p. 507-509
  25. ^ Palágyi Menyhért, / Madách Imre élete és költészete, Athenaeum 1900, p. 75.
  26. ^ / Madách Imre a szabadságharcban, A Nógrád Megyei Levéltár történeti blogja
  27. ^ Komáromi Csaba, / Magyarok a fekete földrészen, Belvedere Meridionale 2010/XXII. 1–2., p. 55.
  28. ^ a b Țimonea, Dorin (8 April 2016). "Masacrele Revoluției de la 1848 în Transilvania. Cum au fost uciși mii de români și maghiari nevinovați" [The massacres of the Revolution of 1848 in Transylvania. How thousands of innocent Romanians and Hungarians were killed]. Adevărul (in Romanian). Retrieved 27 July 2021.
  29. ^ a b (Romanian) Istoria României. Transilvania, coord. Anton Drăgoescu, Fundaţia "George Bariţiu", Cluj-Napoca, 1997 – Chapter VIII
  30. ^ Hermann R. (ed.). Az 1848-49. évi forradalom és szabadságharc története. pp. 79–81.
  31. ^ Freifeld p.73
  32. ^ a b c d Ela Cosma. Cronologia anilor 1848/1849 Archived 24 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine 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."
  33. ^ a b c d (Romanian) Dumitru Suciu, Soldați fără uniformă ai Landsturmului românesc și starea protopopiatelor ortodoxe din Transilvania după Războiul Național din 1848–1849 p. 11-12. Accessed 2013-06-28. Archived 2013-06-30.
  34. ^ a b "În toamna anului 1848 prima ciocnire violentă în care au căzut împreună țărani români și maghiari a avut loc în comitatul Turda, la Luna Arieșului, când comitele Thorotzkai Miklós a dat ordin să se tragă în mulțimea care se opunea recrutărilor. La 12 septembrie 1848 cad 30 de oameni" Gelu Neamțu. Maghiari Alături De Revoluţia Română De La 1848–1849 Din Transilvania Archived 24 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine. "George Bariț" History Institute Cluj-Napoca
  35. ^ Robert William Seton-Watson. A History of the Roumanians: From Roman Times to the Completion of Unity

References

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