The Transylvanian conflict of 1913

The Transylvanian conflict was a minor conflict fought between Hungary and Romania. Although heavy fighting was happening, there was no official war declaration between the two.

## Prelude

Main article: Break up of Austria-Hungary

Hungary started marching in and centralizing Transylvania, in early 1913 after signing an armistice with the also newly formed Austro-Bohemian state, and destroying most Slovakian rebels. Transylvania was in general anarchy at the time

In some territories, people continued their lives as if nothing happened, even though there was no government control in those territories. In some cases militias formed and fought against each other as seen in the Arad conflict, where Hungarian militias fought against Romanian ones.

In Szeklerland the local Székelys formed a semi-government where representatives from each "seat" voted on issues. This government was heavily supportive of the HPG (Hungarian Provisional Government).

Romania through all this saw potential to seize land

## The War

### Start of Romanian involvement

Romania's outfitted expedition marched into Brasov on February 24th where local militia joined the armies as irregulars.

After that, Romania sent more troops to gather more militias, although the number of these troops was few, as they planned on using local militias to centralize Transylvania. The Romanian army's deepest push before March 20th was in Hațeg.

### The invasion of Szeklerland

On March 20th Romanian militias occupied Hungarian dominated Székely villages. The same day a hunter shot down 2 Romanian militia man, heavily wounding one and killing the other. These were the first casualties.

The Székelys, having no standing army, formed militias themselves to counter Romanian attacks. Following the battle of Kökös where Romanian militias, supported with Romanian artillery from the main army decisively defeated under-equipped Székely militias, whom in a lot of cases used hunting equipment to fight, the Székelys resorted to using irregular guerrilla tactics. By March 25th Romania occupied multiple towns, albeit with heavy casualties caused by Székely militias. The guerrilla fighting continued, with Székelys inflicting heavy casualties on Romanian militias, and in some cases driving them off of Székely lands.

### The PMC joins the fight

Before this, the PMC (Provisional Military Command) fought with Romanian militias, but none of those were directly under Romanian rule.

On March 23rd Hungary occupied Déva, after a 7 hour long battle between Romanian militiamen and Hungarian troops.

Hungary through the next week progressively pushed deeper in Romania centralizing territories, or taking them from Romanian militias.

Many Hungarians in Transylvania joined the PMC.

### Full-blown conflict

The first battle between the Hungarian PMC and the proper Romanian army was in Nagyszeben (Sibiu) where the PMC,(which although did have veterans amongst its ranks, was mostly made of minimally trained fresh and young troops, Hungarian militias from Transylvania, and in some cases bandits) was heavily outclassed by the Romanian army. This skirmish resulted in about 30 Hungarian and 11 Romanian dead. Following this, Hungary sent in well trained ex-Austro-Hungarian troops, whom where used in open field battles. Romania as such had to move many of it's resources to fight the Hungarian advance, leaving the Szekler front under-equipped. The Székelys successfully started a counter-attack, and by April they completely pushed the Romanians out of Szeklerland.

On April 2nd the Székelys occupied Brasov, and resisted a Romanian counter-attack. The Hungarian army by now cemented it's rule over the North and started focusing entirely on South Transylvania. Through a series of skirmishes, many of the Romanian heavy weaponry was destroyed and Romania April the 23rd Romania signed the treaty of Kolozsvár, which recognized Hungarian control over the area.

The war, was not a major, nor a medium sized conflict, as the entire conflict was based on Skirmishes, and guerrilla tactics and only resulted in about a thousand dead on both sides.