The 1848â1849 massacres in Transylvania were committed in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. According to Hungarian historian Ăkos Egyed, 14,000 to 15,000 people were massacred in Transylvania in this period. The victims comprised 7,500â8,500 Hungarians, 4,400â6,000 Romanians, and about 500 Transylvanian Saxons, Armenians, Jews, and members of other groups. [1]
On 18 October 1848, Romanians attacked and murdered inhabitants of the village of Kisenyed (now SĂąngÄtin), located near Nagyszeben (Hermannstadt, now Sibiu). [2] [3] Another important event of the 1848â1849 conflict was the massacre at Nagyenyed (today Aiud) (8â9 January 1849). During the event, Romanians massacred around 600â1,000 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 KörösbĂĄnya ( Baia de CriÈ). [5]
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 GerendkeresztĂșr ( Grindeni) [8] and some 90 beaten to death near MarosĂșjvĂĄr ( Ocna MureÈ). [9]
Massacres with recorded, mostly civilian, Hungarian victims occurred in the following places:
Massacre | Date | Location | County | Now named | Victims | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
AlgyĂłgy massacre | October 1848 | AlgyĂłgy | Hunyad County | Geoagiu | 85 [10] | Mostly civilians |
Borosbocsård massacre | October 1848 | Borosbocsård | Alsó-Fehér County | part of Ighiu | 73 | Mostly civilians [10] |
DiĂłd massacre | October 1848 | DiĂłd | AlsĂł-FehĂ©r County | StremÈ | 25 | Local noble families [11] |
Gyulafehérvår massacre | October 1848 | Gyulafehérvår | Alsó-Fehér County | Alba Iulia | 42 | Mass torture, arson, and civilians massacred [10] |
GerendkeresztĂșr massacre | October 1848 | GerendkeresztĂșr | Torda County | part of CheÈani | 200 | Civilians [10] |
SzĂ©kelykocsĂĄrd massacre | October 1848 | SzĂ©kelykocsĂĄrd | Aranyos Seat | Lunca MureÈului | 60 | Civilians [10] |
HĂĄtszeg massacre | October 1848 | HĂĄtszeg | Hunyad County | HaÈeg | 15 | Civilians massacred on the order of the Romanian Orthodox priest. [10] |
MarosĂșjvĂĄr massacre | October 1848 | MarosĂșjvĂĄr | AlsĂł-FehĂ©r County | Ocna MureÈ | 90 | Civilians living in the town [10] [12] |
MikeszĂĄsza massacre | October 1848 | MikeszĂĄsza | AlsĂł-FehĂ©r County | MicÄsasa | 150 | All locals except for one family were massacred [13] |
Kisenyed massacre | 14 October 1848 | Kisenyed | AlsĂł-FehĂ©r County | SĂąngÄtin | 140â175 | Civilians [12] |
Zalatna massacre | 22â24 October 1848 | Zalatna | AlsĂł-FehĂ©r 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 | HĂĄromszĂ©k County | CÄpeni | 51 [19] | After the imperial victory of HĂdvĂ©g over the SzĂ©kelys from the HĂĄromszĂ©k 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] |
HĂ©tfalu massacre | 23 December 1848 | HĂ©tfalu | BrassĂł County | Seven Villages | 55 [20] | On 23 December 1848 a huge Romanian insurgent force arrived, burned, and pillaged the localities, killing 55 Hungarian CsĂĄngĂł inhabitants. [20] |
Nagyenyed massacre | 8â17 January 1849 | Nagyenyed | AlsĂł-FehĂ©r County | Aiud | 600â1,000 [4] | Mostly civilians. The whole city with the ancient Bethlen College was burned and destroyed. [4] [15] Mass rape and torture. [21] |
AlsĂłjĂĄra massacre | 15 January 1849 | AlsĂłjĂĄra | 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 | |
AbrudbĂĄnya massacre | 9 and 17 May 1849 | AbrudbĂĄnya | AlsĂł-FehĂ©r County | Abrud | 1,100â1,200 | 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 | BuceÈ | 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 NaszĂłd, HĂĄtszeg, 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, AbrudbĂĄnya, or Zalatna. [24]
Among the victims of the Romanian massacres, important Hungarian personalities or their relatives were to be found. MĂĄria, the sister of the Hungarian dramatist Imre MadĂĄch 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 FlĂłra 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]
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 BalĂĄzsfalva (now Blaj), villagers in the southern Transylvanian MihĂĄlcfalva (now MihalÈ) illegally occupied a parcel of land belonging to the EsterhĂĄzy family. On 1 June 1848, an imperial committee was appointed in GyulafehĂ©rvĂĄr (now Alba Iulia) and sent out to MihĂĄlcfalva to investigate the illegalities that took place in May. However, thousands of armed peasants from ObrĂĄzsa (now Obreja), OlĂĄhcsesztve (now Cistei), and AlsĂłkarĂĄcsonfalva (now CrÄciunelu 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 GyulafehĂ©rvĂĄr 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 SzĂ©kely 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 MihĂĄlcfalva were published in the pro-imperial newspaper Der SiebenbĂŒrger Bote and were interpreted as a radical Hungarian assault against Romanian civilians, [29] despite the fact that at the time of the conflict, the SzĂ©kely 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 BalĂĄszfalva in September 1848. [30]
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 ChiÈineu-CriÈ) after a conflict with several thousand locals armed with scythes who refused recruitment into the Hungarian Army, while other were imprisoned in NagyvĂĄrad (now Oradea), Arad and Szeged. [32] [33] On 12 September 1848, in the village AranyoslĂłna (now part of Luna), the count of Torda, MiklĂłs 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 AlmĂĄs (now AlmaÈ) 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 BalĂĄzsfalva 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 BĂąrsa) were killed for opposing the plundering in the region, committed by the Hungarian military. [33]
Massacre | Date | Location | Romanian victims | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
MihĂĄlcfalva conflict | 2 June 1848 | MihĂĄlcfalva, AlsĂł-FehĂ©r County (now MihalÈ) | 12 [10] or 14 [28] | Armed clash with the Hungarian-speaking imperial regiment of Anton von Puchner |
Nadab massacre | 10 September 1848 | Nadab, Arad County (now NÄdab) | 3 [32] | Killed for opposing conscription |
AranyoslĂłna massacre | 12 September 1848 | AranyoslĂłna, 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]
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