Romanian offensive in Transylvania

On the night of 27–28 August 1916 the Romanian army entered Transylvania. The Romanian advance guards crossed the border at about 9 p.m. on 27 August, at roughly the same moment as the Romanian minister in Vienna was handing over the declaration of war on Austria-Hungary. Along a front several hundred kilometres long, from the Eastern Carpathians to the Danube, columns of Romanian infantry and cavalry advanced through a dozen or more passes, and throughout 28 August pushed the few Austro-Hungarian units back into the interior. In Romania, which still reckoned time by the Julian calendar, it was 15 August.

Three armies against one

The Romanian General Staff’s plan assumed that surprising the enemy would be the condition of success. The declaration of war was therefore to coincide with the immediate incursion of troops that had long stood ready on the border. Three armies entered Transylvania at once. General Constantin Prezan’s Northern Army attacked through the passes of the Eastern Carpathians towards the Székely Land, General Alexandru Averescu’s Second Army towards Brașov, and General Ioan Culcer’s First Army across the Southern Carpathians towards Sibiu, the Petroșani basin and Orșova. According to the Austrian official history, the advance guards alone numbered about 135,000 men, and behind them the rest of the three armies was to follow, about 369,000 soldiers in all.

Facing them stood the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army of General Arthur Arz von Straußenburg, who had taken command only two weeks earlier. It had about 34,000 rifles and 76 guns, largely in Landsturm battalions, march battalions and border gendarmerie units. Some of its divisions were still forming. The commander of the 71st Division, which defended the area around Brașov, arrived in the city at noon on 27 August, and his staff was still on the Volhynian front. Arz’s orders were to delay the Romanians in the mountains and fall back step by step, destroying bridges and tracks behind them.

The first day in the passes

In the Eastern Carpathians the divisions of the Northern Army seized the Tölgyes, Békás and Ojtoz passes on 28 August. At the Ojtoz Pass the Romanians surprised and captured a Landsturm company during the night. One of the columns, making for the Gyimes Pass, lost its way in the wooded mountains and reached its objective only on the evening of 28 August, when the defenders had already withdrawn. Further south, units of the Second Army came down into the basins around Sfântu Gheorghe and Brașov. They met the toughest resistance at Törzburg Castle in Bran (PL), where two battalions of the Székely 82nd Infantry Regiment inflicted heavy losses on the attackers. The Austrian official history notes that it was in this very first clash that it became clear how poorly prepared the Romanian army was to fight an experienced enemy.

In the south, units of the First Army reached the outskirts of Petroșani, the centre of the Transylvanian coalfield, on 28 August itself. Near Sibiu one of the columns bypassed the Red Tower Pass (Turnu Roșu) along the mountain ridges and came down into the Olt valley, where it was fired on by an Austro-Hungarian armoured train. A Romanian battery disabled it, and the train fell into Romanian hands. The second column, which was advancing along the floor of the gorge, panicked under the fire of a single company and fell back seven kilometres, and exaggerated reports alarmed even the Romanian high command. A similar panic gripped the troops at night near Orșova, where the day had begun with the shelling of Turnu Severin by an armed Austro-Hungarian steamer from the Danube. The Austrian official history recalls that no army escaped such experiences at the beginning of the war.

The following days

On 29 August the Romanians took Petroșani, and the advance guards of the Second Army entered Brașov, the second largest city in Transylvania. On 31 August the defenders withdrew from the Burzenland behind the Olt. Near Sibiu the Austro-Hungarian units fell back to the hills north of the city, and the command of the 1st Army rushed the first battalions of the 51st Honvéd Division there by rail as reinforcements. In the north the Northern Army halted on 30 August and began to dig in to complete its concentration. On 2 September its forward units took Miercurea-Ciuc.

The incursion took the population by surprise. The Hungarian government, not wishing to alarm it, had not ordered an evacuation in advance. In the border towns there was a disorderly flight, and the Saxons and Hungarians were ordered to leave the border communes only on 29 August. Many Transylvanian Romanians, on the other hand, welcomed the advancing troops as liberators.

In the first days almost everything favoured the Romanians. They crossed the mountains with small losses, and the enemy lacked the strength to stop them. What they lacked, however, was speed. The plan provided that after occupying the basins beyond the passes the armies would halt for several days to bring up their main forces, and so it happened. The Central Powers used this time to begin bringing German and Austro-Hungarian divisions into Transylvania.