Austria rules Transylvania directly through a military…
September 1849 CE
Austria rules Transylvania directly through a military governor after suppressing Hungary.
German again becomes the official language, but the Austrians reinstate neither serfdom nor the nobles' monopoly on land ownership or tax-exempt status.
Austria also abolishes the Union of Three Nations and grants the Romanians citizenship.
Former feudal lords hesitate to give up their land, however, and most of the newly freed serfs become sharecroppers on inferior land that barely yields subsistence.
These dismal conditions uproot many Romanian families, ...