C. Sassu - Romanians and Hungarians: Historical Premises

The statement that in order to understand political phenomena it is absolutely necessary to be acquainted with their historical setting is less contested today than ever before because the influence of those phenomena is directly felt to be decisive, on collective as well as personal destinies.

Hence, it is acknowledged that only in the perspective of time can the true and specific significance of contemporary events be understood. That is the reason we have been witnessing for some years that rich effluence of historical studies and romanced histories, all corresponding to the unanimous wish of finding a guiding thread and an intelligible explanation for the chaotic appearance of the tragic events which succeeded one another with such great rapidity.

Following that general inclination, alleged historical arguments occupy a front place also among the motives invoked to obtain a change in the present political situation of the Danubian basin.

Hence, the image of a millennial Hungary is constantly being evoked, which is supposed to have formed over the centuries the best guarantee of balance and stability, of peace, prosperity, and progress of those so excessively sensitive regions, in the very center of the European continent.

Only as a result of the unavoidable opposition which the anachronism of forming again a millennial Hungary meets all the time in the responsible quarters of the various states, conscious of the danger which the total and wished for overturning of the existing states in such obvious contradiction to ethnical facts would present, of the fatal and immediate political repercussions which those changes would have for all the countries of the civilized world, has the absurd claim of asking for the complete remaking of Hungary in her so-called millennial frontiers been renounced for the time being for tactical and opportune motives.

A more realistic calculation of the circumstances showed that for the attainment of that final purpose it would be far better to proceed in stages, to limit for the time being per the suggestions made by Stephen Bethlen the absurd claims to the following three points:

1. Retrocession, without a plebiscite, of the regions along the frontiers of neighboring states which are said to be inhabited by a Hungarian population.

2. A plebiscite in Banat and Bacica.

3. Independence of Transylvania.

An objective examination of the historical evolution will show to what extent those claims are based on facts and to what extent their satisfaction is to the general interest of more natural and fairer order in the center of the European continent.

Looked at in this way any unbiased observer establishes a first and preliminary fact concerning the initial premise on which the political claims are based, namely that millennial Hungary so often invoked is nothing but a fiction invented by historiography and by the Hungarian States official jurists and is unconfirmed by historical facts. As everyone knows, the Hungarian Apostolic Kingdom founded by Stephen I under the patronage of the Holy See, through his coronation on 15 August 1001 with a crown sent to him by Pope Sylvester the Second, ceased to exist on 29 August 1526 after a stormy life which lasted five centuries, having collapsed in the catastrophic battle of Mohcs under the merciless attack of the Turks, who were then at the height of their power during the glorious reign of Sultan Suleiman II, surnamed the Magnificent. That decisive defeat was followed shortly after by the conquest of Buda (1529) and the transformation of Hungary proper into a Turkish pashalik. (1541).

The remnants of the former Hungarian Kingdom were then divided up between Archduke Ferdinand, brother of Charles V and his deputy in the Empire, as well as the brother-in-law of Louis II, last King of Hungary, who had fallen on the battlefield of Mohcs, and John Zpolya, Voivode of Transylvania. The Archduke occupied the territories bordering on the countries which were under the Habsburg rule, and John Zpolya took over the Eastern parts, the Sultan conferring on him a kingdom which belonged to the victor of Mohcs by the right of war and the sword.

From that date until the Peace of Karlowitz (1699), the Porte ruled in the place of the Hungarian State in the Pannonian plain. For a century and a half these territories were governed by a Turkish pasha who resided in Buda, formerly the residential city of the kings of Hungary, just as in Banat, a little further South, another pasha held sway.