Moţii şi luptele lor la 1848-1849

Coming soon, I hope that in the first decade of November 2012 will be available.

Congratulations 21inf! A book welcomed which I hope to have an impact on the public who loves history and not only ...

The book is now available. 319 pages. 35 lei. No mailing costs included.

Is the painting on cover available in better detail? What was the source for illustration?

I dont know what is the source of the image on the cover, but I'll ask the person who is in charge with the entire collection. This cover is the same for all the collection, for my book (which is presented in the image, being the 6th volume of the collection) and the first 5 volumes which already were published. I also dont know if it is a better resolution availble for the image.

It reminds me of the day I visited the Brukenthal Museum / Sibiu, many years ago.

Details about the book, testimonials and ordering at

http://taramotilor.ro/motii_si_luptele_lor.html

21inf, I have a question about the contents of the book:
in describing the battles from Iara and Lita in january 1849 between the fighters of Simion Balint legion and the hungarian national guards you gave exact numbers of losses on both sides. Noting that although the Romanian fighters were the ones who attacked their adversaries present in these villages, they have suffered much smaller losses (two to three times lower) given that they were inferior in firepower to their ennemies. What would be the explanations that you have? I gave myself an explanation related to the waging battle mode of the hungarian national guards, lacking experience and discipline required to the efficient use of their superior firepower, probably lacking adequate weapons for close combat. Of course is just a guess, maybe you know from readings several elements who can explain this...

Romanian Landsturm was not always inferior as firepower to the Hungarian army or Hungarian national guards. Sometimes they were even, due to the following situations (and explanations about the number of casualties):
-sometimes the Hungarians were as bad armed as the Romanians.
-some of the atacks Romanians gave were by surprise, so the enemy had no time to react and usually flee, many casualties ocuring during the hastilly retreat (shot in the back or cut to pieces) or drawn in rivers (in one of the fights in Apuseni, the Hungarians had 100 dead men drowning in Someş, aditional to those killed in battle).
-poor enemy leadership
-Romanians used better the terrain, minimising the diference of firepower (there were situations when 25 Romanians held half a day against 200 Hungarian, regulars, by defending a mountain pass)
-sometimes the numbers were falsified by both sides, to justify a defeat or to increase their merits.

In my book I mentioned the numbers I found in the 1848-1849 documents and which were more plausible, after I compared with other sources. I oposed the Romanian documents to the Hungarian documents or Austrian documents when availble and/or confronting Romanian Landsturm documents with the one's of the parishes registering the deads. Not always I could reconstuct the correct numbers, so if I had doubts, I prefered not to mention the numbers. If I mentioned them, they seemed plausible or they resisted to the confrontation.

One interesting fact about fighting with fire weapons. Do you know how many Hungarians fight vs Austro-Romanians in the Ciucea Pass in december 1848? Some thousands! And they fight for one entire day! Do you know how many casualties were? About 15 dead from the Austrians and 12 dead from the Hungarians! At the siege of Alba Iulia, in almost 4 months of siege, the Austrian garison had almost 350 dead. From those, only about 15 died in battle, the rest succumbed due to malnutrition and sickness (and one hit by the lightning during a storm). The casualties were much higher in the mountains, in the fight with the Romanian Landsturm. I found losses as much as entire units wiped out (the German Legion - from 400 men, only 6 survived and there are more examples like this, but I will probably mention in my next book, which will be more complete and about the entire National War from Transylvania from 1848-49).

Thank you very much 21inf! My mention linked to the firearms superiority of the Hungarians is related to several readings (a text in Hungarian describing the organization and arming of Transylvanian hungarian national guards and one other text mentioning the organization, composition and equipment of the hungarian national guards involved in the siege of Arad fortress) from which I generalized the picture. The reality was most probably different, as you properly describe it! Another reason of my surprise about the numbers was the Poienari and Tarnava fightings from november 1848 (the last better called a massacre) where the better led (probably better armed and trained too) hungarian detachment caused great losses to the romanian militia (but also to the austrian small detachment), which also marked my perspective over these fightings.