The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania. E. Smith Gerard
many English readers the country is still virtually a “land beyond the forest.”
Not being, however, of that ferocious disposition which loves to inflict needless information upon an unoffending public, I pass over in considerate silence such very superfluous races as the Agathyrsi, the Gepidæ, the Getæ, and yet others who successively inhabited these regions. Let it suffice to say that in the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era the land belonged to the Dacians, who were in course of time subjugated by Trajan, Transylvania becoming a Roman province in the year 105 A.D. It remained under the Roman eagle for something over a century and a half; but about the year 274 the Emperor Aurelian was compelled to remove his legions from the countries over the Danube and abandon the land to the all-ravaging Goths.
I have only here insisted on the Dacian and Roman occupation of Transylvania, because one or other or both of these peoples are supposed to be the ancestors of the present Roumanian race. The Roumanians themselves like to think they are descended directly from the Romans; while Germans are fond of denying this origin, and maintain this people to have appeared in these regions at a much later period. According to the most reliable authorities, however, the truth would seem to lie between these two opposite statements, and the Roumanians to be the offspring of a cross-breed between the conqueror and the conquered—between Romans and Dacians.
After the Roman evacuation the country changed hands oftener than can be recorded, and the rolling waves of the Völkerwanderung passed over the land, each nation leaving its impress more or less upon the surface, till finally the Magyars began to gain something of a permanent hold, towards the eleventh century. This hold, however, was anything but a firm one, for the Hungarian king had alike outward enemies and inward traitors to guard against, and was in continual fear lest some affectionate relation should rob him of one of his crown-jewels.
To add to this, the province of Transylvania was but thinly peopled, and ill qualified to resist attacks from without. In view, therefore, of all these circumstances, King Geisa II. bethought himself of inviting Germans to come and establish colonies in this scantily peopled land, promising them certain privileges in return for the services he expected. Hungarian heralds began, consequently, to appear in German towns, proclaiming aloud in street and on market-place the words of their royal master. Their voices found a ready echo among the people, for this promised land was not absolutely unknown to the German yeomen, who many of them had passed through it on their way to and from the Crusades; besides, this was the time when feudal rights weighed most oppressively on unfortunate vassals, and no doubt many were glad to purchase freedom even at the price of expatriation.
As a German poet sings:
“When castles crowned each craggy height
Along the banks of Rhine,
And ’neath the mailèd warriors’ might
Did simple burghers pine;
“When bowed the common herd of men,
Serfs to a lord’s commanding,
The holy Roman Empire then
For free men had no standing.
“Then off broke many and away,
Another country questing;
‘We’ll found another home,’ said they—
‘A house on freedom resting.
“ ‘Hungarian forests, wild and free,
Are refuge for us keeping;
From home and home’s dear ties will we
Emancipate us, weeping.’ ”
Or in the words of another:
“We’ll ride away to the east,
Away to the east we go—
O’er meadows away,
O’er meadows so gay;
It will be better so.
“And when we came to the east,
’Neath the lofty house came we,
They called us in,
O’er meadows so gay,
And bade us welcome be.”
In thus summoning German colonists to the country, the Hungarian monarch showed wisdom and policy far in advance of his century, as the result has proved. It was a bargain by which both parties were equally benefited, and thereby induced to keep the mutual compact. The Germans obtained freedom, which they could not have had in their own country, while their presence was a guarantee to the monarch that this province would not be torn from his crown.
In the midst of a population of serfs, and side by side with proud and overbearing nobles, these German immigrants occupied a totally different and neutral position. Without being noble, they were free men every one of them, enjoying rights and privileges hitherto unknown in the country. Depending directly from the King, they had no other master, and were only obliged to go to war when the monarch in person commanded the expedition. For this reason the country inhabited by the Germans was often termed the Königsboden, or Kingsland, and on their official seal were engraved the words, “Ad retinendam coronam.”
The exact date of the arrival of these German colonists in Transylvania is unknown, but appears to have been between 1141 and 1161. That they did not all come at the same time is almost certain. Probably they arrived in successive batches at different periods; for, as we see by history, all did not enjoy exactly the same privileges and rights, but different colonies had been formed under different conditions.
SAXON BURGHER IN OLDEN TIMES.
Also the question of what precise part of the German father-land was the home of these outwanderers is enveloped in some obscurity. They have retained no certain traditions to guide us to a conclusion, and German chronicles of that time make no mention of their departure. The Crusades, which at that epoch engrossed every mind, must have caused these emigrations to pass comparatively unnoticed. Only a sort of vague floating tradition is preserved to this day in some of the Transylvania villages, where on winter evenings some old grandam, shrivelled and bent, ensconced behind the blue-tiled stove, will relate to the listening bairns crowding around her knees how, many, many hundred years ago, their ancestors once dwelt on the sea-shore, near to the month of four rivers, which all flowed out of a yet larger and mightier river. In this shadowy description probably the river Rhine may be recognized, the more so that in the year 1195 these German colonists are, in a yet existing document, alluded to as Flanderers. The name of Sachsen (Saxons), as they now call themselves, was, much later, used only as their general designation; and it is more than probable, from certain differences in language, customs, and features, that different colonies proceeded from widely different parts of the original mother-country.
Although the Hungarian kings generally kept their given word right nobly to the immigrants, yet these had much to suffer, both from Hungarian nobles jealous of the privileges they enjoyed, and from the older inhabitants of the soil, the Wallachians, who, living in a thoroughly barbaric state up in the mountains, used to make frequent raids down into the valleys and plains, there to pillage, burn, and murder whatever came into their hands. If we add to this the frequent invasions of Turks and Tartars, it seems a marvel how this little handful of Germans, brought into a strange country and surrounded by enemies on all sides, should have maintained their independence and preserved their identity under such combination of adverse circumstances. They built churches and fortresses, they formed schools and guilds, they made their own laws and elected their own judges; and in an age when Hungarian nobles could scarcely read or write, these little German colonies were so many havens of civilization in the midst of a howling wilderness of ignorance and barbarism.
The German name of Transylvania—Siebenbürgen, or Seven Forts—was long supposed to have been derived from the seven principal fortresses erected