While the growth of national feeling in Hungary and Croatia was tending at once to a healthier life and to dangerous divisions, a much more remarkable awakening of new and separate life was showing itself in the province of Transylvania. The geographical isolation of that province from the rest of Hungary is very striking, even now that railways have connected the different parts of the kingdom; but in 1848 this isolation was far greater, and had a considerable effect on the political history of the time. The Carpathians almost surround the country, and form a natural bulwark. Between this high wall of mountains on the north-east and Buda-Pesth stretches a vast plain. No province of the Empire contained a greater variety of separately organized nations. The Transylvanian Diet was not, like the other local assemblies, the result of an attempt to express the feelings of a more or less united people, but arose merely from the endeavour to give reasonable solidity to an alliance between three distinct peoples. Of the three ruling races, the first to enter Transylvania were the Szekler, a people of the same stock as the Magyar, but slower to take the impress of any permanent civilization. They conquered the original inhabitants of the country, a race probably of mixed Dacian and Roman blood, called Wallachs or Roumanians. Towards the end of the ninth century came in the Magyars, before whom the Szekler retreated to the north-east, where the town of Maros-Vasarhely became their capital. This town is on the River Maros, which, rising in the Carpathians, flows all across Transylvania.
The Magyars in the meantime extended their rule over all parts of Hungary, but the position which they gained in Transylvania was one of much less undisputed supremacy than that which they established in Northern Hungary; for in the former province they remained a second nation, existing by the side of the Szekler, neither conquering nor absorbing them.
Much of the country, however, was still uncolonized, and was liable to inroads from dangerous neighbours; so in the twelfth century a number of German citizens who lived along the Rhine, and some of the German knights who were seeking adventures, came into Transylvania to offer their services to the King of Hungary. The German knights were unable to come to a satisfactory agreement with the King, and went north to try to civilize the Prussians; but the citizens remained, acquired land, developed trade, and developed, also, a power of self-government of which neither Szekler nor Magyar were at that time capable. That portion of the country which has been colonized by the Saxons has a look of greater neatness and comfort than the rest. The little homesteads are almost English in their appearance, with, occasionally, gardens and orchards. Hermannstadt, the capital of this district, bears traces of its former greatness in several fine old churches, a law academy, and picture gallery. Its fortifications must have been almost impregnable in old times, with strong watch-towers and walls of great height. The portions of the walls that remain show marks of the sieges of 1849. The Carpathians, on the south-east, are many miles distant, but the Rothenthurm Pass, through which the terrible Russian force made its way into the country, is visible in some lights.