Nor were the Roumanians content with this official appeal; for their own national committee issued about the same time, on their own responsibility, an address to the Szeklers and Magyars. In this address they declared that they, like the Szeklers and Magyars, had sympathized with the March movement in Hungary; but that a faction had now usurped the Government of the country, and was aiming, at once, at depriving the King of his crown, and the Hungarian Peoples of their nationality. They hoped that the better part of the Magyars and Szeklers would unite against this faction; but, if they would not, then the Roumanians must declare war on them. They promised, however, to carry on the war in a humane manner, and to spare women, old men, and prisoners. At the same time, they issued an appeal to their countrymen, urging them to abstain from cruelties in warfare, as such practices were unworthy of a free people. The Saxons had, at first, been somewhat unwilling to act with the Roumanians; but the new movement seemed to give an opening for better co-operation. Joint committees of the two races were formed, and Puchner undertook to organize the soldiers of both races.
Of the Roumanian leaders who now came to the front, the most remarkable was Avraham Jancu.[22] He had been originally trained as a lawyer; but, after the meeting in September, he went off to organize the National Guard in his own mountains; and, when Puchner had issued his proclamation, Jancu received orders to give his assistance in disarming the Magyars. This process had been begun by the Roumanians, without waiting for orders; and it had, in consequence, been accompanied with many acts of cruelty. Jancu therefore sent down three tribunes with forces to protect the Magyar families from violence; and he also persuaded one or two of the towns to surrender to him, that he might then protect them from ill-treatment. Jancu also won several victories, and became so formidable to his opponents that he gained the name of the "Mountain King." But the humane exertions of Jancu and other tribunes, seconded with all his influence by Puchner, were not sufficient to keep in check the wildness of some of the Roumanian leaders. The cruelties which both the Magyars and Szeklers had committed in the struggle; the summary execution at Klausenburg of three leaders of the Roumanians, before the actual rising had taken place, and the reputed crucifixion of another at Maros Vasarhely, roused the fury of the Roumanians to its highest pitch.
The fiercest hatred of the Roumanians was directed against the Szeklers who had been their most determined enemies; and General Gedeon marched against Maros Vasarhely. Its specially isolated position, and the bad roads in its neighbourhood made it an easy prey for a General who had some skill in guerilla warfare. The city fell into the hands of Gedeon, who revenged the wrongs of the Roumanians by inflicting every species of brutality on the Szekler inhabitants. Horrified as Puchner was at these cruelties, he did not wholly understand the character of the men with whom he was working; for, in one of the orders which he issued, he gave a distinct sanction to the practice of burning villages. He seems, indeed, to have intended this form of violence merely to be used as an extreme measure in case of retreat; but the Roumanians did not so understand it; and when, on one occasion, Puchner was sternly rebuking some of the Roumanian leaders for not better preventing the cruelties of their followers, one of them retorted by appealing to this order.
Besides the difficulties arising from these cruelties, Puchner had to contend against the continual rivalry between the Saxons and Roumanians. The former were contemptuous towards their allies; and, according to the Roumanian theory, were disposed to take unfair advantage of the Roumanians in the election of the members of the Committee of Management. Nevertheless, the help of the Saxons probably enabled Puchner to secure a more orderly Government than he could have achieved without it; and, amongst others from whom he received this kind of help, was the Saxon clergyman, Stephan Ludwig Roth, who had already been known for his efforts to secure German emigrants to Transylvania. He was appointed by Puchner to govern the district of Mediasch, in the valley of Kokelburg, where he distinguished himself by his humanity to the Magyar families who came under his protection, and showed his large-hearted sympathy by adopting a Magyar child who had been deserted by its parents. Moreover, Bishop Schaguna, who, it will be remembered, had discouraged the first risings of the Roumanians, now joined in with Puchner's plans, and exerted himself to restrain the violence of his countrymen.
But while Puchner, aided by men like Schaguna, Jancu and Roth, was endeavouring to check the cruelties which his new followers were too ready to inflict, there was needed on the other hand an equally strong influence to restrain the savagery of the Magyar and Szekler. This was the more necessary, because, whatever injustice these races had committed towards the weaker races of Hungary, in the state in which things then stood, the Magyar cause had become identified with the cause of European freedom. Only in the success of the armies which Kossuth was trying to organize, did there seem even the least remaining chance for the overthrow of that Government which was crushing out the life of Vienna, which had trampled on the freedom of Lombardy, and which threatened to be the complete inheritor of the old system of Metternich. But if the Magyar armies in North Hungary were to achieve either the military or moral success which such a cause required, it was necessary that, in Transylvania also, the same race should deserve and obtain a similar success. For that purpose, they would need a man who would be the equal of Puchner both in generalship and humanity. For under Puchner's leadership, the Saxons and Roumanians were gaining in military prowess, even more than in self-restraint, and Klausenburg had fallen into the hands of the Imperial forces.
Such was the state of things, when, on December 15, it was announced that Bem had been appointed by Kossuth Commander-in-Chief of the Transylvanian Army. He at once assembled the officers of the Army which he was to command, and informed them that he required from them unconditional obedience. Those who did not obey, he said, would be shot. Those who did obey he would know how to reward. With these few stern words, he dismissed them. This address was evidently one which might either be delivered by a mere overweening tyrant, or by a man of real genius and strong will, who understood the work that was before him. A few months served to show in which class Bem was to be reckoned. Ignoring the Commissioner, who had been sent down, he armed and reclad his troops; punished disorder with a stern hand, but showed such personal sympathy with his followers, that he became known as "Father Bem;" while his enemies soon learned to distinguish him from the other leaders by his generosity and humanity to the conquered. He seems to have been one of those born leaders of men, who understand when to be stern, and when to be indulgent. On one occasion an officer doubted if he could hold a position. Bem told him that he must either hold it, or be shot; and it was held. On another occasion his troops, seized by the panic natural to undisciplined levies, fled before the enemy, leaving Bem in great danger. He announced afterwards that he might have had to shoot or flog many of them; but he would not do the first, because he thought they might still serve their country; nor the second, because he would not treat them as beasts; and, therefore, he must forgive them. With regard to his military capacity, although the conventional military critics were disposed to discredit it, yet it could not be denied that he taught an undisciplined mob to stand fire before a regular army, to obey discipline, and even to develope a courage and capacity which won special applause and honours for the Szekler nation; that he succeeded in about three months in completely turning the fortunes of the war in Transylvania; and at a later period in holding his own for another two months against the powerful armies of two nations. His personal daring was more like that of a knight errant than of a modern general. On one occasion, after a battle in which he had been worsted, he saw some Austrians carrying off one of his cannon. He darted forward alone, exclaiming, "That is my cannon"; and so cowed his enemies, that they surrendered it at once. On another occasion he sent an aide-de-camp to call up the rear-guard of his Army, and found that they had all disappeared, and that he was continuing the struggle with hardly any followers.
As if to mark the cause for which Bem was fighting as more distinctly than ever the cause of liberty, Puchner began, in January, 1849, those negotiations with the Russians which were finally to stamp the Austrian invasion of Transylvania with the anti-national character which other circumstances of the struggle might have made doubtful. In this matter, as in his original adoption of the Roumanian cause, Puchner seems not so much to have taken the lead as to have been driven into his position by unavoidable circumstances. Schaguna, whose prominence among the Roumanians had specially marked him out as an object of hostility to the Magyar Government, fled from Hermannstadt on the first news of Bem's arrival in Transylvania, and is believed to have made the first appeal for Russian help. The Roumanians, whose kinsmen of the Principalities (Wallachia and Moldavia) were in some alarm about the intentions of Russia, do not seem to have sympathized warmly with this action of their bishop; but the Saxons were less scrupulous; and the towns of Kronstadt and Hermannstadt sent a formal address to General Lüders, the Russian Commander in Bucharest, asking him to come to their assistance. Lüders answered that the Czar sympathized with the brave defenders of the Austrian throne, and wished to respond to their appeal; but that he was unable to do so without a direct request from the Austrian Commander-in-Chief. Under these circumstances, Puchner felt himself bound to yield to the wishes of the Saxons; some of the Roumanian leaders joined in the appeal; and so, on February 1, formal application was made for Russian help. The Russians do not seem to have come in great numbers, nor with that formal announcement of war which accompanied their later invasion, in June. Bem, at any rate, did not lose courage. Although he had recently been repulsed by Puchner, he rallied his forces; and, on March 11, he defeated the Russians before Hermannstadt, and followed up his victory by the capture of the town. This signal victory secured, for a time, the reconquest of Transylvania by the Magyars; and, if Bem had remained in that province, it is possible that he would not only have retained the territory under Magyar rule, but that he might have made that rule acceptable to the Saxons, and, in time, even to the Roumanians.
But behind Bem stood the dark figure of one who had already brought disgrace and injury on the Magyar cause, and who was still further to degrade it on this occasion. This was Ladislaus Csanyi, the intriguer who had introduced into the election of Zala County those elements of bribery and intimidation which had compelled Deak to refuse election. Csanyi now desired to put Hermannstadt to the sword; but Bem interfered, and the Saxons still honour his memory as that of the man who saved their countrymen from massacre and their chief city from destruction. Determined to counteract, so far as he could, the brutal policy of Csanyi, Bem issued a general amnesty to those who had opposed the Magyar Government; but, unfortunately, that Government believed that they needed Bem's military talents more than his civil wisdom; and they despatched him into the Banat, to clear that province also of the enemies of Magyar rule. So, while Bem was succeeding in battle in the Banat, Csanyi was undoing his work in Transylvania. With the approval, apparently, of Kossuth, Csanyi repudiated Bem's amnesty altogether, and established tribunals in Transylvania for the summary execution of his enemies and the confiscation of their goods.
There was one victim of this reign of terror whose character and sufferings stand out in a manner which throws a halo over the Saxon cause. Stephan Ludwig Roth had, as above mentioned, distinguished himself by his humanity in the administration of the government of Mediasch under Puchner's rule; and the Magyar officials of the town of Elizabethstadt had sent him an address of thanks for his protection of their town from plunder. But he was hated by the strong partizans of Magyar rule, as the most illustrious embodiment of the feeling in favour of Saxon independence; and his attempts to promote the immigration of Germans into Transylvania had been remembered against him by those who wished to crush out, in Hungary, all national feeling except that of the Magyars. Bem had been so well aware of the hatred which Roth had excited, that he had thought it necessary to give him, in addition to the general amnesty, a special guarantee for his safety. In reliance on this security, Roth had retired to his parish of Meschen, and was living without any apparent fear, when he was suddenly arrested there by the soldiers of Csanyi, and brought, after some delay, to Klausenburg. There he was kept in prison, and, though at first leniently treated, he was, after a time, prevented from holding any communications with his friends. In the meantime, the tribunal which was to decide his fate was not allowed to come to a free decision. The Magyar mob of Klausenburg gathered round the court and demanded his death; and even those of the judges who were convinced of his innocence were terrified into voting for his condemnation. His friends appealed for mercy to Csanyi, but he indignantly rejected all petitions, declaring that Roth had deserved ten deaths.
After his condemnation Roth sent the following letter to his children:—