There was indeed far less trouble from the Roumanian than from the
Italian side. On October 29, 1918, one could say that all military power
in the Banat was at an end. The Hungarian army took what food it wanted
and made off, leaving everywhere, in barracks and in villages, guns,
rifles, ammunition. Vainly did the officers attempt to keep their men
together. And scenes like this were witnessed all over the Banat. Then
suddenly, on Sunday, November 3, the Roumanians, that is the Roumanians
living in the country, made attacks on many villages, and the Roumanians
of Transylvania acted in a similar fashion. With the Hungarian equipment
and with weapons of their own they started out to terrorize. Among their
targets were the village notaries, in whom was vested the administrative
authority. At Old Moldava, on the Danube, they decapitated the notary, a
man called Kungel, and threw his head into the river. At a village near
Anina they buried the notary except for his head, which they proceeded
to kick until he died. Nor did they spare the notaries of Roumanian
origin, which made it seem as if this outbreak of lawlessness--directed
from who knows where--had the high political end of making the country
appear to the Entente in such a desperate condition that an army must be
introduced, and as the Serbs were thought to be a long way off, with the
railways and the roads before them ruined by the Austrians, it looked as
if Roumania's army was the only one available. On the Monday and the
Tuesday these Roumanian freebooters, who had all risen on the same day
in regions extending over hundreds of square kilometres, started
plundering the large estates. Near Bela Crkva, on the property of Count
Bissingen-Nippenburg, a German, they did damage to the sum of eight and
a half million crowns. At the monastery of Me[vs]ica, near Ver[vs]ac,
the Roumanians of a neighbouring village devastated the archimandrate's
large library, sacked the chapel and smashed his bee-hives, so that they
were not impelled by poverty and hunger. In the meantime there had been
formed at Ver[vs]ac a National Roumanian Military Council. The placard,
printed of course in Roumanian, is dated Ver[vs]ac, November 4, and is
addressed to "The Roumanian Officers and Soldiers born in the Banat,"
and announces that they have formed the National Council. It is a
Council, we are told, in which one can have every confidence; moreover,
it is prepared to co-operate in every way with a view to maintaining
order _in l[)a]untra [s,]i in afar[)a]_ (both internal and external).
The subjoined names of the committee are numerous; they range from
Lieut.-Colonel Gavriil Mihailov and Major Petru Jucu downwards to a
dozen privates. The archimandrate, who fortunately happened to be at his
house in Ver[vs]ac, begged his friend Captain Singler of the
_gendarmerie_ to take some steps. About twenty Hungarian officers
undertook to go, with a machine gun, to the monastery on November 7; at
eleven on the previous night Mihailov ordered the captain to come to see
him; he wanted to know by whom this expedition had been authorized. The
captain answered that Me[vs]ica was in his district, and that he had no
animus against Roumanians but only against plunderers. After his arrival
at Me[vs]ica the trouble was brought to an end. Nor was it long before
the Serbian troops, riding up through their own country at a rate which
no one had foreseen, crossed the Danube and occupied the Banat, in
conjunction with the French. The rapidity of this advance astounded the
Roumanians; they gaped like Lavengro when he wondered how the stones
ever came to Stonehenge.... When the Serbian commandant at Ver[vs]ac
invited these enterprising Roumanian officers to an interview he was
asked by one of them, Major Iricu, whether or not they were to be
interned. "What made you print that placard?" asked the commandant; and
they replied that their object had been to preserve order. They had not
imagined, so they said, that the Serbs would come so quickly. "I will be
glad," said the commandant, "if you will not do this kind of thing any
more."