Ruling system Until 1691 Transylvania was ruled by
Unio Trium Nationum, the three state-constituting socio-ethnical entities termed "nations", consisting of the Hungarian nobility, the Saxon urban settlers, and the Székely peasant-soldiers, while a significant part of the general population, consisted of Orthodox Romanians, remained deprived of any civil and political rights.
The Composition of the Parliament The
Unio Trium Nationum (
Latin for "Union of the Three Nations") was a pact of mutual aid codified in 1438 by three
Estates of
Transylvania: the (largely
Hungarian)
nobility, the
Saxon (
German) patrician class, and the free military
Székelys. The union was directed against the whole of the peasantry, regardless of ethnicity, in response to the
Transylvanian peasant revolt. as the commoners were not considered to be members of these feudal "nations". The coalition of the "Three Nations" retained its legal representative monopoly under the prince as before the split of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom occasioned by the Ottoman invasions. According to Dennis P. Hupchick, though there were occasional clashes between the Hungarian plainsmen and the Székely mountaineers, they were united under the patronymic "Magyars" and, with Saxon support, formed a common front against the predominantly Romanian peasantry. Based on a work by
Antun Vrančić (1504–1573), '''', more estimations exist as the original text is translated/interpreted in a different way, especially by Romanian and Hungarian scholars. According to Hungarian interpretations, Vrančić wrote about the inhabitants of Transylvania and about the Romanians: "The country is inhabited by three nations,
Székelys,
Hungarians, and
Saxons; I should also add the Romanians who – even though they easily equal any of the others in number – have no freedom, no aristocracy, no right of their own, besides a small number living in the Haţeg district, where the capital of
Decebalus is believed to have stood, and who, during the time of
John Hunyadi, a native of those places, were granted aristocratic status because they had always taken part in the struggle against the Turks. The rest of them are all commoners, serfs of the Hungarians, having no places of their own, spread all over the territory, in the whole country, sparsely inhabited in open regions, mountains and forests, they mostly live out their miserable lives hiding together with their flocks." In Romanian interpretations, it is noted that the proper translation of the first part of the sentence would be: "...I would nevertheless add the
Romanians, who – even though they easily equal the others in number – ..." Romanian historians Ioan Bolovan and Sorina-Paula Bolovan argue that the Romanians were the majority during the life of Antun Vrančić. Based on their works, in 1690 there was an absolute Romanian majority, and no significant demographic change happened between the Middle Ages and 1750, when the Austrian administration tracked newcomers, which also explained concerns about Transylvanian Romanians leaving for Wallachia and Moldavia, including
Emperor Joseph II. Károly Kocsis and Eszter Kocsisné Hodosi argue that the Hungarians were the most numerous ethnic group before the second half of the 17th century, when they were exceeded by Romanians. They assert the following structure of the population: in 1595, out of a total population of 670,000, 52% were Hungarians, 28% Romanians, 19% Germans. Around 1650, in a letter written to the Sultan,
Moldavian prince
Vasile Lupu affirms that the number of Romanians was one-third of the population. By 1660, according to Miklós Molnár, 955,000 people lived in the principality (
Partium included) and the population consisted of 500,000 Hungarians (including 250,000 Székelys), 280,000 Romanians, 90,000 Germans and 85,000 Serbians, Ukrainians and others and had reached its end-of-century level. On the other hand, according to Dennis P. Hupchick, Romanians were the majority population in the region during the rule of
Stephen Báthory (16th century). In 1600, according to George W. White, Romanians, who were primarily peasants, constituted more than 60 percent of the population. This theory is supported by Ion Ardeleanu, who states that the Romanian population represented "the overwhelming majority" in the age of
Michael the Brave. According to Louis Roman, various works from the XVII century claim that Romanians were the most numerous ethnic group in Transylvania during that time, including those of Johannes Tröster,
Grigore Ureche, and
Miron Costin. The period 1567–1661 had a deep demographic impact on the country.
Transylvania was repeatedly ravaged by war between 1657 and 1661.
Evliya Çelebi, accompanying Ali Pasha's army into Transylvania in 1661, reported vast areas, comparable in size to counties, being reduced to ashes, entire villages being put to the sword, and groups of 3,000–8,000 captives. The Transylvanian populations suffered huge losses, the
Partium and the counties of
Belső-Szolnok,
Doboka,
Kolozs,
Közép-Szolnok, and
Kraszna were laid waste. According to the Nagysink diet in 1664: "Over an area of five or six miles around a village, one would not find a single hut left standing, nor a single man alive, for they had been abducted, slain, or felled by the plague... while most of the poorest folk died from starvation". According to Zsolt Trócsányi, the official estimates made by the Austrian administrative authority () dating from 1712 to 1713, the ethnic distribution of the population in
Transylvania is as follows: 47%
Hungarians, 34%
Romanians, 19%,
Saxons. Ioan Aurel Pop, on the other hand, asserts that the Austrian censuses of 1713 and 1733 indicate that ethnic Romanians made up approximately 63-65% of the Transylvanian population, while Hungarians, Székelys, and Saxons accounted for around 35-37%. In
Benedek Jancsó's estimation, there were 250,000 Romanians, 150,000 Hungarians and 100,000 Saxons in Transylvania at the beginning of the 18th century. In 1720, according to Károly Kocsis and Eszter Kocsisné Hodosi, out of a total population of 806,221, 50% were Romanians, 37% Hungarians, 12% Germans.
Evliya Çelebi (1611–1682) was an Ottoman explorer who traveled through the territory of the
Ottoman Empire and neighboring lands over a period of forty years, recording his commentary in a travelogue called the
Seyahatnâme "Book of Travel". His trip to Hungary took place between 1660 and 1666. The Transylvanian's state of development in the 17th century was so good that it was an attraction to strangers longing for its territory.
Evliya Çelebi wrote in his book that the Romanian serfs moved en masse to Transylvania because of the extreme ruthlessness of the rulers of Romanian lands, and the justice, legal order, and low taxes in Transylvania. With the various Turkish, Tatar, and Cossack raids, and especially those due to the constant harassment and extortion of the Greeks, who were the tenants of the incomes of the two neighboring Romanian voivodeships, the entire population of some villages fled to Transylvania. In a diploma of Prince
Gabriel Bethlen: "The Saxon priests belonging to the Kézdi chapter inform us that before that a village called Kövesd was inhabited by all Saxons, but now due to the many wars, it has been so destroyed that there are more Vlachs living in it like a Saxon." In 1648, Prince
George I. Rákóczi wrote in a letter: "Our Saxon bishop called us together with his seniors under his bishopric, reporting that since the number of Saxons in Réten had greatly decreased and the Vlachs, vice versa, had multiplied greatly". The Romanian peasantry, which flooded into Transylvania in this way, could take the place of the Hungarian, Székely and Saxon population decimated by the vicissitudes of the war, and their remaining real estate and property, without any difficulties. was amplified after
György Dózsa's rebellion of 1514, the religious persecutions and the worsening standard of living of Romanian Transylvanians. In 1635, the delegates of Vasile Lupu solicited the movement of serfs near Cluj to Moldavia. Similarly, in 1662
Michael I Apafi urged the dwellers of Bistrița to stop the movement of the impoverished people towards Moldavia. From the 16th century some ethnic Romanians started moving from Transylvania towards Poland, Silesia and Moravia, where they formed the ethnoregion of
Moravian Wallachia. According to Árpád Kosztind, the
Romanians were not affected by the
Counter-Reformation, and no Romanians was forced to flee for religious reasons. On other hand, according to Bolovan Ioan and Ștefan Meteș, the fact that Romanians belonged to the Orthodox Church and not to any
Western Christian denomination was the cause of their remaining of political, economic and cultural inferiority to Hungarians, Szekelys and Saxons, making them more willing to emigrate towards Moldova and Wallachia. Not by chance, a good part of the Romanian elite, but sometimes also simple people, emigrated, passing south and east of the Carpathians to the Romanian states of Moldavia and Wallachia, where they were able to assert themselves unfettered on all levels. It is also true that a small part of the Romanian nobility, as much as survived after the attempts of the Hungarian royalty to Catholicize in the previous centuries, in some places embraced one of the new reformed confessions. Food shortages, the famine of 1684–1686, caused by an increase in the price of grains, lead some of inhabitants to leave Transylvania, and many of the villages in the
Fundus Regius remained abandoned. The Diet of Vásárhely of December 1694 claims that one third of the population of
Făgăraș Country emigrated to Wallachia. On 7 May 1699, the Austrian Emperor
Leopold I blamed the Transylvanian ruling class for the fleeing of the population towards the
Danubian Principalities and other Ottoman-controlled areas. By the 18th century, the emigration of Romanians towards Moldavia and Wallachia further increased. ==Gallery==