THE ROUMANIANS: NATIONALITY AND ATROCITIES.
The Roumanians have often been called slavish and cringing, but,
considering their past history, it is not possible that they should be
otherwise, oppressed and trampled on, persecuted, and treated as vermin
by the surrounding races; and it should rather be matter for surprise
that they have been able to continue existing at all under such a
combination of adverse circumstances, which would assuredly have worn
out a less powerful nature.
Until little more than a century ago, it was illegal for any Wallachian
child to frequent a German or Hungarian school; while at that same
period the Wallachian clergy were compelled to carry the Calvinistic
bishop on their shoulders to and from his church, whenever he
thought fit to exact their services. Still more inhuman was a law
which continued in force up to the end of the sixteenth century,
ordaining that each Wallachian out of the district of Poplaka, in the
neighborhood of Hermanstadt, who injured a tree, if only by peeling
off the bark, was to be forthwith hung up to the same tree. “Should,
however, the culprit remain undiscovered,” prescribes the law, “then
shall the community of Poplaka be bound to deliver up for execution
some other Wallachian in his place.”
The faults of the Roumanians are the faults of all slaves. Like all
serfs, they are lazy, not being yet accustomed to work for themselves,
nor caring to work for a master; they have acquired cunning and
deceit as the only weapons wherewith to meet tyranny and oppression.
Sometimes, when goaded to passion, the Roumanian forgets himself, and
his eyes flash fiercely on his tormentor; but the gaze is instantly
corrected, and the eyes lowered again to their habitual expression of
abject humility.
Occasionally they have cast off the yoke and taken cruel revenge on
their real or imaginary oppressors, as in 1848, when, instigated
and stirred up by Austrian agents, they rose against their masters
the Hungarian noblemen, and perpetrated atrocities as numerous as
disgusting. They pillaged the country houses, setting everything
on fire, and put the nobles to death with many torturing devices,
crucifying some and burying others up to the neck, cutting off tongues
and plucking out eyes, as a diabolical fancy suggested.
This was all the more surprising, as the bond between serfs and masters
had always been of a most peaceful and patriarchal character, and it
was to his Hungarian landlord that the Wallachian had been always
accustomed to turn for counsel or assistance. True, the serf was forced
to pay certain tithes to his master; but in return, whenever the crops
failed, the master himself was obliged to sustain the serf, and provide
him with corn out of his own granaries.
A Hungarian lady related to me a very horrible instance of cruelty
which had happened on the property of a near relation of her own in the
revolution of 1848. This gentleman, one of the most generous and humane
landlords, did not usually reside at his country place, but had spent
much time in foreign travel, and was unknown to most of his people,
which, however, did not prevent them from resolving on his death.
Hearing of the riots which had broken out on his estate, the nobleman
was hastening to the spot; and the excited peasantry, informed of his
impending arrival, prepared to receive him with scythes and pickaxes.
The servants of the household had all fled the neighborhood at
the first alarm; but there remained behind at the chateau the
foster-daughter of the gentleman, a girl of sixteen, who, brought
up with the family, was warmly attached to her benefactor, whom she
called father. Shutting herself up in a turret-room, she tremblingly
awaited the _dénouement_ of the fearful drama which was being enacted
around her. From her window she could overlook the road by which her
foster-father was expected to arrive, and she stood thus all day at her
post, straining her eyes for what she feared to see, and praying God to
keep her benefactor away.
Twilight had set in, and the moon began to rise, when a solitary rider
was at last descried coming down the neighboring hill. The poor girl’s
heart sank within her, for she knew that this could be no other than
her father; and even had she doubted it, the wild-beast roar which
broke from the peasants at the sight of their long-expected prey
destroyed all remnant of hope. As in a horrible nightmare, she saw
them advance towards the horseman in a black, heaving mass, like a
crawling thunder-cloud, broken here and there by the sinister gleam
of a sharpened scythe. Paralyzed with horror, she yet was unable to
look away, and no merciful fainting-fit came to spare her the sight of
any of the horrible details which followed: how the hapless rider was
surrounded and speedily overpowered; how a dreadful scuffle ensued;
and after an interval which seemed like an eternity, how something was
hoisted up at the end of a long pole—something round in shape and
ghastly in hue—the head of her beloved benefactor!
By-and-by she was roused from her grief by the loud voices of rioters
approaching, and presently the front door being shaken and forced in
with a resounding crash, the bloody wretches proceeded to overrun the
house, and ransack the larders and cellar, laying hands on whatever
viands they could discover. In the large vaulted hall they began the
carouse, seated round the banqueting-table, and on a platter in the
centre was placed the head of their victim.
Two of the peasants who had been searching the upper apartments now
appeared on the scene, dragging between them a convulsively trembling
girl, who looked ready to die with terror. “They had found her
up-stairs in the turret,” they explained, “sobbing like a fool, and
calling out for her father, like a suckling whelp that has lost its
dam.”
“The old man’s daughter!” shouted one of the revellers; “let us cut off
her head as well—they will look fine together on the platter!”
“No,” said another; “she is not worth killing, she is half dead
already. Let her look at her dear father, since it is for him she is
crying;” and raising the dish from the table, he held it in horrible
proximity to her shrinking face.
The poor girl tightly closed her eyes in order to escape the dreadful
sight, but her persecutors were not inclined to let her off so easily.
Maddened alike by blood and drink, they grasped her roughly, and
seizing her long black eyelashes on either side, by main force they
compelled her to raise her eyelids and fix her swimming eyes on the
gory head.
At first she could distinguish nothing for the blinding tears which
obscured her vision, but suddenly the mist cleared away, and the cry
she then uttered was so sharp and piercing that it re-echoed again from
the vaulted roof, and caused the drinkers to pause for a minute, glass
in hand. Lucky it was for her and hers that the dull ear of the tipsy
murderers had failed to distinguish the meaning of that cry aright;
for in moments of intense emotion widely different feelings are apt
to resemble each other in expression, so that joy may be mistaken for
grief, and hope for despair—and it was hope, not despair, which had
given that piercing sharpness to her voice, for the ghastly grinning
head before her was the head of a stranger!
The joyful exclamation rising to her lips was checked just in time, as
her dazed brain began to recognize the urgency of the situation. She
must not undeceive these men, who were exulting over the death of their
landlord. Her father was not dead, it is true, but neither was the
danger yet past, and his safety might depend on keeping up the delusion
a little longer. By good-luck her confusion passed unnoticed by the
semi-tipsy revellers, who presently had no more thought but for their
bumpers, so that the young girl, enabled to creep away unobserved,
was ultimately the means of saving the nobleman’s life by sending a
messenger to warn him of his danger.
The man who had been executed in his place turned out to be a gentleman
from some neighboring district, who in the dusk had taken a wrong turn
on the road, thus occasioning the mistake which cost him his life.
* * * * *
Many such instances of cruelty, of which the Roumanians made themselves
guilty in the year ’48, have deprived them of the sympathy to which
they might have laid claim as a suffering and oppressed race; but
people who have a thorough knowledge of the Roumanian character, and
are able to estimate correctly all the influences brought to bear on
them at that time, do not hesitate to affirm that these people were
far more sinned against than sinning, and cannot be held responsible
for the atrocities they perpetrated. Even Hungarian nobles, themselves
the greatest sufferers by all that occurred during the revolution,
are wont to speak of them with a sort of pitying commiseration, as of
poor misguided creatures led astray by unscrupulous agents, and wholly
incapable of comprehending the heinousness of their behavior.
An amusing illustration has been given of the ignorance of these
revolutionary peasants in 1848. Some of them, having broken into a
nobleman’s mansion, discovered a packet of old letters in a drawer, and
believing these to be patents of nobility, they proceeded to burn them
in front of the portrait of one of the family ancestors, exclaiming,
tauntingly, “See, proud lord, how thy family becomes once more as
ignoble as we ourselves are!”
Few races possess in such a marked degree the blind and immovable
sense of nationality which characterizes the Roumanians: they hardly
ever mingle with the surrounding races, far less adopt manners and
customs foreign to their own; and it is a remarkable fact that the
seemingly stronger-minded and more manly Hungarians are absolutely
powerless to influence them even in cases of intermarriage. Thus the
Hungarian woman who weds a Roumanian husband will necessarily adopt
the dress and manners of his people, and her children will be as good
Roumanians as though they had no drop of Magyar blood in their veins;
while the Magyar who takes a Roumanian girl for his wife will not
only fail to convert her to his ideas, but himself, subdued by her
influence, will imperceptibly begin to lose his nationality. This is
a fact well known and much lamented by the Hungarians themselves, who
live in anticipated apprehension of seeing their people ultimately
dissolving into Roumanians. This singular tenacity of the Roumanians
to their own manners and customs is doubtless due to the influence of
their religion, which teaches them that any deviation from their own
established rules is sinful—which, as I have said before, is the whole
pivot of Roumanian thought and action.
In some districts where an attempt was made in the time of Maria
Theresa to replace the Greek popas by other clergymen belonging to
the united faith, the inhabitants simply absented themselves from
all church attendance or reception of the sacraments; and there are
instances on record of villages whose churches remained closed for over
thirty years, because the people could not be induced to accept the
change.
As to that portion of the Transylvanian Roumanians which in 1698
consented to embrace the united faith, their separation from their
schismatic brethren is but a skin-deep one after all, having no
influence whatsoever on their customs and superstitions, or on the
strong bond of nationality which holds them all together.
It is a notable fact that among all Oriental races the ideas of
religion and nationality are inextricably bound together. So with the
Roumanians, whose language has no other word wherewith to express
religion or confession but _lege_, law—obviously derived from the
Latin _lex_.
The deeply inrooted sense of Roumanian nationality has, moreover,
received fresh stimulus in the comprehension which of late years has
been slowly but surely dawning on the minds of these people—that
they are a nation like other nations, with a right to be governed
by a monarch of their own choice, instead of being bandied about,
backward and forward, changing masters at each European treaty. There
is no doubt that the bulk of Roumanians living to-day in Hungary
and Transylvania consider themselves to be serving in bondage, and
covertly gaze over the frontier for their real monarch; and who can
blame them for so doing? In the many Roumanian hovels I have visited
in Transylvania, I have frequently come across the portrait of the
King of Roumania hung up in the place of honor, but never once that
of his Austrian Majesty. Old wood-cuts representing Michel the Brave,
the great hero of the Roumanians, and of the rebel Hora,[31] are
also pretty sure to be found adorning the walls of many a hut. It is
likewise by no means uncommon to see village taverns bearing such
titles as, “To the King of Roumania,” or “To the United Roumanian
Kingdom,” etc.
A little incident which, taking place under my eyes, impressed me very
strongly at the time, helped me to understand this feeling more clearly
than I had done before. Two Roumanian generals engaged in some business
regarding the regulation of the frontier, being at Hermanstadt for a
few days, paid visits to the principal Austrian military authorities,
and were the object of much courteous attention. One evening the
Austrian commanding general had ordered the military band to play in
honor of his Roumanian _confrères_, and seated along with them on the
promenade, we were listening to the music. Presently two or three
private soldiers passing by stopped in front of us to stare at the
foreign uniforms. Apparently their curiosity was not easily satisfied,
for after five minutes had elapsed they still remained standing, as
though rooted to the spot, and other soldiers had joined them as well,
till the group soon numbered above a dozen heads.
Being engaged in conversation, I did not at the moment pay much
attention to this circumstance, but happening to turn round again some
minutes later, I was surprised to see that the spectators had become
doubled and quadrupled in the mean time, and were steadily increasing
every minute. Little short of a hundred soldiers were now standing in
front of us, all gazing intently. Why were they staring thus strangely?
what were they looking at? I asked myself confusedly, but luckily
checked the question rising to my lips, when it suddenly struck me
that _all_ these men had swarthy complexions, and _each_ one of them a
pair of dark eyes, and simultaneously I remembered that the infantry
regiment whose uniform they wore was recruited from Roumanian villages
round Hermanstadt.
They were perfectly quiet and submissive-looking, betraying no sign of
outward excitement or insubordination; but their expression was not
to be mistaken, and no attentive observer could have failed to read
its meaning aright. It was at _their own generals_ they were gazing in
that hungry, longing manner; and deep down in every dusky eye, piercing
through a thick layer of patience, stupidity, apathy, and military
discipline, there smouldered a spark of something vague and intangible,
the germ of a sort of fire which has often kindled revolutions and
sometimes overturned kingdoms.
Heaven alone knows what was passing in the clouded brain of these poor
ignorant men as they stood thus gaping and staring, in the intensity of
their rapt attention! Visions of glory and freedom perchance, dreams
of peace and of prosperity; dim far-off pictures of unattainable
happiness, of a golden age to come, and an Arcadian state of things no
more to be found on the dull surface of this weary world!
The Austrian generals tried not to look annoyed, the Roumanian generals
strove not to look elated, and the English looker-on endeavored (I
trust somewhat more successfully) to conceal her amusement at the
serio-comicality of the situation, which one and all we tacitly ignored
with that exquisite hypocrisy characterizing well-bred persons of every
nation.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] The real name of this celebrated Wallachian rebel, born in 1740,
was Nykulaj Urszu. Under the reign of the Emperor Joseph II. he became
the chief instigator of a revolution among the sorely oppressed
Transylvanian Wallachs, who, rising to the number of thirty thousand
men, proceeded to murder the Hungarian nobles, and plunder, sack, and
burn their possessions. Hora’s project was to raise himself to the
position of sovereign, and he had already adopted the title of King of
Dacia when he was captured, and, together with his confederate Kloska,
very cruelly put to death at Karlsburg in 1785.