This also applies largely to Bessarabia, which, first lost in 1812, was incorporated with Rumania in 1856, and finally detached in 1878.  The few Rumanians belonging to the landed class were won over by the new masters.  But while the Rumanian population was denied any cultural and literary activities of its own, the reactionary attitude of the Russian Government towards education has enabled the Rumanian peasants to preserve their customs and their language.  At the same time their resultant ignorance has kept them outside the sphere of intellectual influence of the mother country.

The Rumanians who live in scattered colonies south of the Danube are the descendants of those who took refuge in these regions during the ninth and tenth centuries from the invasions of the Huns.  Generally known as Kutzo-Vlakhs, or, among themselves, as Aromuni, they are—­as even Weigand, who undoubtedly has Bulgarophil leanings, recognizes—­the most intelligent and best educated of the inhabitants of Macedonia.  In 1905 the Rumanian Government secured from the Porte official recognition of their separate cultural and religious organizations on a national basis.  Exposed as they are to Greek influence, it will be difficult to prevent their final assimilation with that people.  The interest taken in them of late by the Rumanian Government arose out of the necessity to secure them against pan-Hellenic propaganda, and to preserve one of the factors entitling Rumania to participate in the settlement of Balkan affairs.

I have sketched elsewhere the early history of the Rumanians of Transylvania, the cradle of the Rumanian nation.  As already mentioned, part of the Rumanian nobility of Hungary went over to the Magyars, the remainder migrating over the mountains.  Debarred from the support of the noble class, the Rumanian peasantry lost its state of autonomy, which changed into one of serfdom to the soil upon which they toiled.  Desperate risings in 1324, 1437, 1514, 1600, and 1784 tended to case the Hungarian oppression, which up to the nineteenth century strove primarily after a political and religious hegemony.  But the Magyars having failed in 1848 in their attempt to free themselves from Austrian domination (defeated with the assistance of a Russian army at Villagos, 1849), mainly on account of the fidelity of the other nationalities to the Austrian Crown, they henceforth directed their efforts towards strengthening their own position by forcible assimilation of those nationalities.  This they were able to do, however, only after Koeniggraetz, when a weakened Austria had to give way to Hungarian demands.  In 1867 the Dual Monarchy was established, and Transylvania, which up to then formed a separate duchy enjoying full political rights, was incorporated with the new Hungarian kingdom.  The Magyars were handicapped in their imperialist ambitions by their numerical inferiority.  As the next best means to their end, therefore, they resorted to political