the Hungarians upon the Rumanian population has
been practically nil. They found the Rumanian nation firmly established,
race and language, and the latter remained pure of Magyarisms, even in
Transylvania. Indeed, it is easy to prove--and it is only what might be
expected, seeing that the Rumanians had attained a higher state of
civilization than the Hungarian invaders--that the Hungarians were largely
influenced by the Daco-Romans. They adopted Latin as their official
language, they copied many of the institutions and customs of the
Rumanians, and recruited a large number of their nobles from among the
Rumanian nobility, which was already established on a feudal basis when
the Hungarians arrived.

A great number of the Rumanian nobles and freemen were, however, inimical
to the new masters, and migrated to the regions across the mountains. This
the Hungarians used as a pretext for bringing parts of Rumania under their
domination, and they were only prevented from further extending it by the
coming of the Tartars (1241), the last people of Mongolian origin to harry
these regions. The Hungarians maintained themselves, however, in the parts
which they had already occupied, until the latter were united into the
principality of the 'Rumanian land'.

To sum up: 'The Rumanians are living to-day where fifteen centuries ago
their ancestors were living. The possession of the regions on the Lower
Danube passed from one nation to another, but none endangered the Rumanian
nation as a national entity. "The water passes, the stones remain"; the
hordes of the migration period, detached from their native soil,
disappeared as mist before the sun. But the Roman element bent their heads
while the storm passed over them, clinging to the old places until the
advent of happier days, when they were able to stand up and stretch their
limbs.'[1]

[Footnote 1: Traugott Tamm, _Ueber den Ursprung der Rumaenen,_, Bonn, 1891.]

3

_The Foundation and Development of the Rumanian Principalities_

The first attempt to organize itself into a political entity was made by
the Rumanian nation in the thirteenth century, when, under the impulse of
the disaffected nobles coming from Hungary, the two principalities of
'Muntenia' (Mountain Land), commonly known as Wallachia and 'Moldavia',
came into being. The existence of Rumanians on both sides of the
Carpathians long before Wallachia was founded is corroborated by
contemporary chroniclers. We fin