The New Europe/Volume 7/Number 84/A Roumanian Anniversary

A Roumanian Anniversary

The conclusion of the peace which the Central Powers have imposed upon Roumania almost coincides with one of the most stirring events in the history of the Roumanian nation. In the spring of 1848 Kossuth roused the Magyar people to revolutionary action, for the freedom of their national existence. The domination of Vienna was to be shaken off, and the Magyar country was to be given to the rule of the Magyars. But in the Magyar country the majority of the population was Slav and Roumanian, the latter mainly inhabiting Transylvania, a separate Grand Duchy under the Austrian Crown. That was a fact which the Magyar revolutionaries refused to acknowledge. Hungary, according to their plan, was to become a unitary Magyar State. Steps were in consequence taken to proclaim the union of Transylvania with Hungary. That was not to the liking of the Roumanians. But if, by an act of union, an end was likely to be put to the old and bitter feud, enemy of all peaceful progress, the leaders of the Roumanians were prepared to support the idea—on one condition: that the union should be the expression of two independent wills, and that it should inaugurate the free co-operation of two free and equal factors. Kossuth, the Liberal, refused. In vain did refugees from Muntania, anxious to see autocracy at bay, attempt to mediate between and secure the co-operation of their Transylvanian co-nationals and the Magyar leaders, offering to enlist a Roumanian legion in support of the Magyar revolution. The Hungarian Premier, Count Batthyány, declared that an agreement was only possible on the basis of the fundamental principle of the supremacy of the Magyar element.

Confronted with the uncompromising attitude of the Magyars, the Roumanian peasants assembled 40,000 strong outside the town of Blaj (Blasendorf) on 16 May, 1878. They proclaimed their allegiance to the Austrian Crown, and each and all of them took the oath, beautiful in its simplicity, impressive in its sentiments and determination, “ever to support, by righteous and legitimate means, our Roumanian nationality . . . . our creed and our language, as well as liberty, equality, and fraternity. In accordance with those principles I will respect the nationality of all the inhabitants of Transylvania, claiming from them equal respect for my own nationality. I will not attempt to dominate anybody, but neither will I suffer to be dominated by anybody. I will co-operate to further the welfare of humanity, of the Roumanian nation, and of the Fatherland. So help me God.”

Now, when once more the hope of liberation is darkened by the course of events, there must be many a Transylvanian cottage in which the oath of the ancestors has become the nightly prayer of the suffering Roumanians; while the Magyars, freed now of the Russian danger as they were then of the Austrian chain, clamour in victorious exultation: “Le despotisme est mort, vive le despotisme!”