Transylvanian horseman

On memory and shadow

I've just finished reading Joseph Roth's The Radetzky March.

In the years before the Great War, at the time the events chronicled in these pages took place, it was not yet a matter of indifference whether a man lived or died. When someone was expunged from the lists of the living, someone else did not immediately step up to take his place, but a gap was left to show where he had been and those who knew the man who had died or disappeared, well or even less well, fell silent when they saw the gap. When a fire happened to consume a particular dwelling in a row of dwellings, the site of the conflagration remained for a long time afterwards. For masons and bricklayers worked slowly and thoughtfully, and when they walked past the ruins, neighbours and passers-by alike recalled the form and the walls of the house that had once stood there. That's how it was then! Everything that grew took long to grow; and everything that ended took a long time to be forgotten. Everything that existed left behind traces of itself, and people then lived by their memories, just as we nowadays live by our capacity to forget, quickly and comprehensively. For a long time afterwards, the feelings of the officers and men of the dragoon regiment, and of the civilian inhabitants of the small town, were shaken and troubled by the deaths of the regimental doctor and Count Tattenbach.

Those words especially stuck in my mind. I am conscious of the past, of the things that are no more and the people who have disappeared. Indeed more so than ever now, with a growing awareness of a vanished birth mother who may be dead of alive, and living here or there if indeed she still lives. Suddenly a fresh mystery has come upon my life, and a new tension.

But, before that, I wandered my Transylvania of exile deeply aware of those who had gone before me: travellers, shepherds, soldiers, aristocrats, traders, invaders, bureaucrats and bandits. Their debris lay all about: old roads, crosses, battlefields, ruined castles, manor houses derelict or converted to state institutions, old border posts, multi-lingual place names and railways heading in peculiar directions. I noticed things that few of the inhabitants seemed aware of. Perhaps I could, who had not lived through communism, whose family had not bloodied its hands, directly or through association, during the fascist era. It was my freedom to see beyond the veils that clouded my neighbours' vision, and my choice to keep quiet or to speak.

Now here in my homeland, or what I suppose it to be, I am aware of the past. I feel the past and the footsteps of those who trod, rode and trudged ways now more or less busy. The main road is busy and clogged with vehicles, whilst the former Roman road sees an occasional pedestrian. I feel the gaps where once the farmer went with his horses, the train once crossed the bare hills, the cavalry exercised, labourers worked, and villagers went about their business. That is all gone, and we have forgotten them all. As Roth said, everything that existed left behind traces of itself. It still does. But when I walked around T E Lawrence's cottage yesterday the press of people caused memory to flee and hide. Tourists sought some glimpse of Lawrence the celebrity, but it was others that rendered him thus, and that reclusive man hated it. Of the private Lawrence, complex and requiring wisdom to understand, subject of an excellent biography by a psychiatrist (A Prince of Our Disorder by Professor John Mack), there was no trace. The guides did not know of Mack's book, and nothing was said to hint at Lawrence being anything other than a slightly eccentric hero who liked to relax in a quiet cottage.

Roth showed me another thing too: which I knew, of course, but had not articulated so clearly. In the final stages of The Radetzky March, as the First World War breaks out on the Eastern Front, the Habsburg regime went about a rather arbitrary selection and execution of "traitors". The retreating army left behind many corpses swinging from trees, whose only "crime" was belonging to the wrong ethnic group or religion. So, every regime has its dark side - a shadow and skeletons in the cupboard - however kindly the old emperor might appear. Every country and each corporation, and some religions too. I left exile sickened by the inescapable darkness of the nationality whose country I shared. But here in Britain there is a shadow too, even as we remove those skeletons. Where I work there is a shadow.

I spent a good few years talking up the positive side of Romania, where I lived, and making excuses for the faults. It was the Holocaust that stopped me, for I could not excuse the deeds of my neighbours' parents and grandparents let alone whitewash them when children and grandchildren neither cared nor repented.

Now I am finding a way to get on with life, aware of the national shadow back here in Britain, unable to do much about it, and a little constrained myself by the dark side. It's all about living with duality, I suppose. As well as those internal tensions between opposites, there is a great big duality beyond: fairness versus guarded privilege; civic values pitched against hubris; responsibility opposing unsustainability. Like Roth's characters we are caught up on a runaway train. Unlike those characters we may be able to adapt. The hardest part is to living hopefully. No, I shall not be making excuses for any shadow.

Lieutenant Carl Joseph, Baron von Trotta and Sipolje, the main protagonist of Roth's novel, a soldier for most of his life, longed to be a peasant just like his great-grandfather. Just before war broke out he attained that aim, earning a few brief months of happiness. Then all was sundered by events far beyond his control. I sought to work with horses in a remote mountain village, and that was taken from me by events far less momentous than a war. Unlike Trotta. my life was preserved, and health too. I could have fared much worse. It's best not to hang onto a dream whose fulfilment depends upon good fortune and the favourable outcome of events beyond ones control.

As for being aware of the past, the people and things that have gone, that is a bonus to enrich life.

That leaves the puzzle of what to read after Miklos Banffy and Joseph Roth. Tolstoy, perhaps?

Horsemen of the Apocalypse

I found this picture whilst delving into history. Most particularly I was looking into a part of the history of Eastern Europe where I used to live. One superficial thing that struck me about this picture is the way in which folded blankets are used between horses and saddles, just as I did at my riding centre and still do today. There is a lot to be said for a good army blanket. But that is by far the least important thing to draw from the picture.

A former neighbour told me a little about cavalry engagements during the Second World War, in his case fighting with the Romanian army supporting the Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union. The Eastern Front was a callous brutal business from which few men or horses returned. The Romanian army, so I was told, was so short of resources that the men of his unit needed to provide their own horses. My cavalry veteran informant got as far as the River Don by Summer 1942, over half way from his European home to the Caspian Sea deep in Asia. There at the Don Elbow he was injured sufficiently severely to be invalided out of the army. And that is why he lived. His fellows went on to Stalingrad, from which few returned.

Supposedly a book was written about the Romanian cavalry on the Eastern front, titled (I believe) Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I haven't succeeded in getting hold of a copy.

Most of my trail rides carried me across relics of that war. There were shell craters on the mountains, defensive trenches decaying on high ground, bunkers crumbling in the forest, and the wreckage of bridges blown up in 1944. There were more sights than memories, at least more physical remains than stories that anyone wanted to own up to. From 1945 to 1989 those stories were taboo, and by then much had been forgotten. But one thing was clear enough: there was no glory in any of it. There was none of the swank of Western peacetime cavalry in an aggressive invasion. The stories that I heard were, for the most part, the tales of men who rode out to settle scores both national and ethnic. The accounts of bored, frustrated men seeking adventure. In doing so they brought new defeat upon their people, though that wasn't the way their path seemed to lead in the beginning.

I am sorry for them, deluded as they were (and some still are, to judge by things that were said to me - which is one reason why for a while I fell a little out of sympathy with Romania). However I am more sorry for the horses that those men dragged into that bloody conflict. They at least were innocent.

Final analysis

Three years has given me plenty of time to think. Here is a little analysis.....perhaps my final analysis given that I wish to move on. It's a collection of thoughts, not a judgement. Those who read to the end will see that. I lived amongst normal people in Romania. However that country brought certain traits to the fore, the better for me to see them. I'm not in a better place now, just one blander and more restrained. Human nature is universal after all.

I left Romania hating the place. I fled afraid that someone would try to stop me. Back in the West I kept out of sight though America is big and far away. I knew that mendacious individuals had filed false accusations in their feeble attempts to extort money, imagining that I would return to Romania and fall into the trap. But I did not return, and perhaps I will never be able to return. In the back of my mind lingered a fear that someone would try to reach out to finger me for whatever false accusation seemed most likely to stick.

For a time all conversation about that country referred to the omnipresent corruption, frequent theft, rivers choked with refuse, over-priced services and the whole gamut of ills that I had faced. I painted a bleak picture of a land with which I had been involved for nearly two decades. I denigrated the place where willingly I had entered exile eight years previously. It was an unhealthy condition, a black cloud hovering above me excluding the light. As time passed the unsustainability of my position became clear. Did I want to live my life harbouring a grudge that could not be fulfilled by punishing Romania? A crack appeared in the wall when I began again to attend an Orthodox congregation. A few Romanians, students at a university theological institute, were members. Here was a possibility to meet open-minded educated Romanians representing another face of the country. They were a reminder that I had indeed known such people during my exile. However few such intellectuals resided near my mountain village and at that distance I socialised little in the towns and cities. It was time to reappraise my relationship with Romanians, treating the people as individuals rather than avatars for the ills of their homeland. In an open discussion the priest counselled patience noting that I was making progress. I reached the point of no longer feeling hostility well up on hearing the Romanian language spoken. Indeed I began to review in my mind those parts of the country that I missed. The high mountains remain in my soul. I remember certain people with fondness: indeed these outnumber the individuals whose conduct repelled me. I miss the churches and monasteries where I was welcomed. I began to hope that the country would resolve its ills rather than hoping that the ground would swallow it up.

The realisation came that just as I left Britain having failed to prosper out of a sense of not belonging, thus also Romania was not thriving in Europe in part through having been thrust into an unnatural environment. The country would better belong within a hypothetical ‘Levantine Union’ encompassing the Balkans, Turkey and perhaps Greece and the more moderate Middle Eastern nations too. The European Union with all of its rules and expectations for ‘civilised’ behaviour is alien territory for a country much of whose history lay under the yoke of the Ottoman Empire or within its shadow. Is what we Westerners call corruption any more than a key element of a survival mechanism which has ensured the continuity of the Romanian people (or, for that matter, Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians or Albanians) for many centuries? What is this mechanism? Chiefly the ability to acquiesce with more powerful neighbours based on the realistic assumption that a weaker people cannot change the status quo. However acquiescence can become an active process when the overlord has time to concentrate on the underling. Gifts of gold and livestock were welcomed. The underling’s leader, dependent on support from above, owed his survival to a stream of bribes transmitted and to ‘making himself useful’. Likewise underlings earned success through the ability to generate a satisfactory stream of gold, goods and favours at the expense of those below. Being ‘useful’ includes doing the dirty work of those more powerful. The needs of others lose importance alongside the imperative of one’s own survival.

The mechanism worked in full through Ottoman domination between the sixteenth century and the late nineteenth and has done so in part ever since then. Indeed it has been highly effective when compared, say, to the destructive impact of the Mongol Horde. The old Romanian Regat survived vassaldom to the Ottomans intact and on surprisingly good terms with its former oppressor. It ensured that Romanians fared far better than Poles during the Nazi era. Adoption of a harder line even than Moscow for years kept Soviet troops out of Romania. From a narrow ethnic viewpoint this survival strategy might be judged a qualified success. Of course inequality within the population is a problem: the poorest of the rich are far better off materially than the richest of the poor. That’s no surprise: bribery removes money that might be invested in means of production. It secures the positions of those who possess more power than entrepreneurial talent. Besides, a poorly rewarded mass does not make an efficient workforce. There are more problems. People are denied healthcare because they cannot afford to bribe a doctor. Monsters have been created: Antonescu, Ceasusescu and even the playboy King Carol II stand out. But the Romanians are still there as a people, so are the Greeks, Bulgarians and Albanians: unlike Cumans, Pechenegs or Saxon Transylvanians who fell by the wayside over the centuries. Unlike the Jews who, above all others, stand out as the victim of Romanian collective psychosis: their greatest example of doing an oppressor’s dirty work for him. Unlike, too, that swathe of the population possessed of land, education or faith persecuted to death or brutal submission through the early years of state socialism. Those two skeletons continue to inhabit the Romanian cupboard of shadows: two groups alien to the lowest common denominator of the masses destroyed for the pleasure of oppressors. But truly there are not two skeletons: there stand a pair of huge ossuaries each containing the bones of a several hundred thousand victims. Then the Romanians bulldozed their historic towns to construct monstrosities in their place at the behest of a megalomaniac cobbler. They blame him, but they operated the machines. It’s always the fault of someone else: that is another part of the survival mechanism, indeed the trait that enables the mechanism itself to perpetuate. Otherwise self-loathing would cause the mechanism to be rejected. Then they deny personal involvement. ‘Someone else’ did it. That was the excuse when I caught employees with items stolen from my tack room. But if they were there during fascism or communism what would they have done? The same deeds would have been perpetrated. A people has broken the mirror in which it might review itself, blamed someone use for the damage then used the situation to avoid cleaning itself up. Full exposure would beg the Romanians to examine what their nation stands for. That would rob them of their historic survival mechanism. The question is: could a modern reinvented Romania gain new strengths that would ensure its development into a better nation? I hope so. Now after much reflection I wish the Romanians well.

I was an apologist for Romanian history. In truth I did not know that history well for the whole carefully selected and well prepared nationalist meal had been fed to me. Deepening knowledge of the ‘true truth’ led me to despise the lies. However Romanian history embodies goodness and heroism as well as evil and ignominy. I moved from one pole of perspective to its opposite. Now I am finding the middle ground. I will neither apologise for wrongdoing nor denigrate that which is commendable.

There is more: for years I failed to see the country for what it is. Hence unwittingly I stoked the engine of greed. Our taking ‘aid’ after the so-called revolution of 1989 created dependency amongst the recipients. Or was it symbiosis? Some people rewarded us by demonstrations of religious conformity, gratifying our spirits until their need for us evaporated. Others lied so convincingly about their ‘needs’ that we gave far more than we should. We felt good giving to people in a poor yet scenically beautiful country. They felt good taking from us. When we questioned what they needed and why, indiscretions were blamed upon ‘communism’ and Ceausescu. In reality the apology should have been: ‘our forebears learned to live this way during four centuries of Ottoman domination and we’re not convinced that another way is better’.

Then finally I wonder whether jealousy has played a part in my attitude. I shied away from corruption. But corruption covers a multitude of sins. Overt bribery for favours lies at one extreme. But more acceptable are the ‘alliances’, the working in partnership with a ‘patron’ who smoothes out obstacles in return for a cut of the profits and favours such as laundering a bit of money here and there. My wife had contacts but lacked the courage to use recommend them. What might have happened if we had been brasher in forging connections? Would the moral cost have exceeded the financial gains? Not all well connected people stank of corruption: the genial mayor of our village did well by Romanian standards yet seemed to keep his hands clean. The country was more spiritual than my former home. A higher proportion of the population attended religious services. A voice inside me whispers that I failed to prosper thanks to a puritanical attitude abetted by a stubborn desire to work alone.

A more ruthless attitude would have removed unproductive horses hence reduced running costs. Alliance with the mayor or a forestry baron could have given me use of premises better suited to my needs. I would not have needed to construct a guesthouse at crippling cost. European Union grants would have become accessible. I’d have earned no less, and perhaps more, whilst spending far less. It’s an intriguing image. Would I have spiralled downward morally? Perhaps I would, but not any more than people whom one saw at church every Sunday. Might I have become mired in illegal activities tying me to a ‘patron’? Probably my financial affairs would have been murky. How long would I have survived? Most likely I’d have lasted for as long as I could control lower back pain through medication and physiotherapy. What would I have become? I can envisage a provincial hick obviously cut off from cultural enlightenment, avoiding torment from coscience by recourse to palinca, physically crippled from sheer distance on the trail and longing for true meaningful friendship. It’s not a pretty picture.

In the end the future of their nation is up to the Romanians. Their historical survival mechanism may not sit naturally within a European context. The country has handicapped itself. Romanians committed genocide amongst the Jews who had operated much of their commerce. Guided by imported ideology Romanians destroyed both aristocracy and intelligentsia leaving a vacuum now unsuitably filled by mafia, former secret policemen and ex-commissars. Communism and its aftermath caused the Saxons, who might have revitalised Romanian industry, to flee. That is for the Romanian nation to face up to.  I shall do myself no good becoming an armchair critic of a problem that neither I own nor hold the key to solving.

A friend and I talked about Miklos Banffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy, a novel recommended by an enthusiast. A lengthy but fascinating work, it has been compared to War and Peace and Anna Karenina rolled into one. I’d passed the now-ruined castles described by Banffy. I’d travelled the roads along which his hero and cast travelled in their horse-drawn coaches. Even the bare-crested hills where those characters rode and hunted I’d crossed on horseback entranced by the beauty of that spare landscape. But the whole class described, the aristocratic families in their rambling estates, had been exterminated. They had their faults, squabbling and gambling away the land of their heritage. But they too were victims of war and ideology. Conversation moved to my experiences: corruption and ignorance set against a startling beautiful backdrop. Then a vivid realisation illuminated my mind. Romania showed me the human condition in unusually stark terms. It was not a reservation where especial evil had been preserved. No, the place was simply like a curved mirror that magnified certain human faults. There were many flaws, of course, at such a meeting point between Europe and the Levant.

But in the West, in powerful America, in complacent Britain and elsewhere these ills exist too. Simply we have checks and balances that prevent certain evils from breaking out in epidemic. There is smaller scope for others in a more affluent society. Here blatant bribery is considered unacceptable by many though subtler corruption may be widespread. Most often the law is moderately effective in keeping a lid on theft. But materialism is rampant. In Britain alcohol abuse is endemic. We haven’t butchered our Jews or aristocrats however very effectively (and socially quite acceptably) we’ve marginalised an underclass comprising the work-shy and most of the unemployable. These are our gypsies, despised and kept at heel. Greed, hatred and stupidity thrive. People cheered as house prices rose without pausing to consider the economic impact. In the travel business I witnessed a new self-importance amongst travellers - especially the British. I saw how people satiated with the hedonism of multiple foreign holidays each year could no longer be fulfilled through the joy of exploration. Romania showed me a depth of the awfulness of the human condition - but that awfulness transcends nationality and geography. It is the evil of humanity and does not belong to any nation. I cannot change human nature. But I can learn to be happy despite it all for that emotion comes from within. That is the goal of personal development: to grow a core of confident happiness.

Switching cars using a horse, 1993

I took this unusual photo back in 1993, near the village of Covasna in southeastern Transylvania. The location was, by then, unique in Europe. It was the last place where horses were employed to switch rail cars. It was also the last place to use a gravity-worked inclined plane to move cars.

The upper level comprised the remnants of a once-extensive narrow-gauge logging railway system, worked by a steam locomotive. The lower level comprised a few kilometres of narrow-gauge line running to a sawmill and main line interchange, and was also operated by a steam locomotive. The top and bottom of the inclined plane were each switched by a horse, a cheaper solution than using a dedicated locomotive. The narrow gauge cars are relatively light and easy for a horse to move because friction is much less than with a rubber-tyred vehicle. Switching horses always walk to one side of the track, so that the horse is safe if the car runs forward. The draw chain has a simple link that will slip off if the car passes the horse.

Strangely, it was rare to see railway enthusiasts or heritage buffs at places like Covasna. These places operated, and then closed, barely recorded.

This arrangement continued to operate into the year 2000, when the sawmill closed. The inclined plane has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, and the narrow gauge tracks at top and bottom still exist although derelict. Tentative plans exist to create a heritage centre based on the inclined plane and railway, so this sight may one day be repeated.

Thoughts on a silent holiday

Dawn came softly through an opaque curtain of falling snow. The herd tramped silently to their hill pasture, awaiting delivery of their morning hay. They would not have long to wait in the cloudy twilight.

As the day grew older, so the weather became kinder. Rays of sunshine pentrated the valley, brightening a quiet, snowy saturday. Above and around, grey clouds merged with the wooded ridges, promising more snow. It is that season when the snow can deepen, falling heavily on the mountain passes, making travel difficult. A good time, then, for those who can to stay at home.

Tudor abandoned the hay put out for him and went foraging, returning to the ways of his feral ancestors. Here and there, dessicated plants thrust through the snow. What they lacked in nutritional value, they seemed to make up in interest for the curious horse.

Back in the stable, Cornel has started to remove deteriorated timbers from a portion of the floor. That is one mark of the rural peasant, the ability to find work and get on with it. The need to be industrious is bred into these people as a survival trait. They are many-talented and quick to appreciate what they can make with their hands. Employing such a person is like having an extra pair of eyes to spot what is needed and an extra pair of hands to get it done.

Today is the National Day of Romania, celebrating union of Transylvania with the old kingdom of Romania on 1 December 1918. The pricipalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, essentially the heartlands of Romanian ethnicity, attained independence back in 1879. Therein lies a part of the complexity of this country, since Transylvania joined the fold to create the modern Romania only after Austro-Hungary was defeated in the First World War. To this day, an identity crisis permeates this nation, raising the question what does it mean to be Romanian? There is a geographical boundary that defines citizenship, of course. However there is a question of nationality too. There are those who define Romanian ethnically, based on mother tongue and cultural affiliation. That is a dangerous defintion, as the Jews of the old Romanian kingdom were to discover. It poses a question too for the two million ethnic Hungarians of Transylvania. Long used to the notion that the province "belongs to Hungary", they find now that the neighbouring Hungarian government does not want them. They would take jobs and require pensions and social security, threatening Hungary's fragile economy. So they can stay as Romanians. I take the view that debating nationality brings little but conflict here on the fringes of the Balkans. Countries like Romania need values rather than a contrived definition of nationality. There are strong values here, amongst the peasants mainly, of hard work, tolerance, faith, hospitality and honesty. These are worthy values to strive for. Attaining them will require the nation to return to its peasant roots. It is a road of humanity rather than nationalism, a path of spirituality rather than materialism. For these reasons, it will be received badly amongst the corrupt government and materialistic nouveau-riche that are together ruining this country.

Still, at least Romania does have a solid peasant tradition to fall back on. Others are less fortunate. Whilst the majority of Romanians were tilling their land, other nations were busy exploiting the subjects of their enormous Empire or killing the native population in an audacious land grab.

Back on the field, the herd eats the hay that we put out. It is silent. No-one is working gainfully on the National Day of Romania. Two of my employees are, however, slaughtering a pig somewhere out of earshot. Being shackled to distant levantine Bucuresti gives nobody in Transylvania much to celebrate nowadays. So why not slaughter livestock on a national holiday? After all, it isn't a religious holiday. People here may tolerate their government and take what is their due, but they believe in God and respect the Church.

Looking southwestward in the late afternoon, the sky is a luminous light blue, nearly maritime in intensity. Distant woods and hills appear as if submerged beneath a tropical sea. North and east, the sky is a dark, almost purplish shade, heralding more snow. The view seems to span a whole range, fom the illusion of southerly warmth to the promise of arctic chill.

Way of the Mongol horsemen, part 2

Sebastian's interesting comment on my 13 October post has set me thinking. So why did the Mongols leave Europe alone after 1241? Wikipedia's entry "Mongol Invasion of Europe" includes the following.

Some western historians attribute European survival to Mongol unwillingness to fight in the more densely populated German principalities, where the wetter weather affected their bows. The territory of Western Europe, with more forests and with many castles along with many opportunities for the heavy cavalry to counter-attack possibly made Western Europe a more formidable opponent. Also, despite the steppe tactics of the Avars and early Hungarians, both were defeated by Western States in the 9th and 10th centuries. A significant number of important castles and towns in Hungary had also resisted the formidable and infamous Mongol siege tactics.

But the probable answer for Batu's stopping after the Mohi River, and the destruction of the Hungarian army, was that he never intended to advance further. He had made the Russian conquest safe for the next ten generations, and when the Great Khan died and he rushed back to Mongolia to put in his claim for power, it ended his westward expansion. Subutai's recall at the same time left the Mongol armies without their spiritual head and primary strategist.

Subsequently, Batu Khan planned to invade Europe as far as the Atlantic Ocean, however Mongol infighting delayed him until 1255. Batu died before having the chance to implement his plan, and his son also died before being able to invade Europe. Afterwards, Mongol ambitions largely were drawn in other directions. However, one further attempt was made against Europe. Again from Wikipedia:

In the mid-1280s Nogai Khan led an invasion of Hungary alongside with Talabuga. Nogai lead an army that ravaged Transylvania with success, where cities like Reghin, Braşov and Bistriţa were plundered and ravaged. However Talabuga, who led an army in Northern Hungary, was stopped by the heavy snow of the Carpathians and the invading force was defeated near Pest by the royal army of Ladislaus IV and ambushed by the Székely in the return. As with later invasions, it was repelled handily, the Mongols losing much of their invading force. The outcome could not have contrasted more sharply with the 1241 invasion, mostly due to the reforms of Béla IV, which included advances in military tactics and, most importantly, the widespread building of stone castles, both in response to the crushing defeat of the Hungarian Kingdom in 1241.

Living in Transylvania, I can testify to the preponderence of post-1241 and post-1280's stone fortifications around ancient towns, villages and even churches. Some of these repelled Tatar invasions into the 1700's, surviving late enough to become bullet-riddled during late medieval sieges. I can well believe how heavy snow could have stopped an army in the Carpathians. The roused Magyars and Szekely would have been fierce opponents, indeed it is still said in Transylvania that "a Szekely's identity card is his pocket knife." It does seem that the Mongols won many victories because of their opponents' mistakes. For example, defenders being drawn out of a fortress by a feigned retreat. Word must have got around about that kind of elementary mistake. The surprise is that it happened so often before the West learnt.

So why did I advance the idea that the Mongols found Europe a poor province to loot? In part, after a week with Tim Cope, the only person within living memory to have ridden the Mongol horde's route, and unusually well read in the history of the Mongols. Tim is, in many ways, a champion of the Mongols, upholding their positive values for a much needed reassessment. Riding their route gave him a unique view of the world as they saw it. I suppose that the Mongol leaders made what, in the modern world, we would call a Cost : Benefit Analysis. There were richer targets located closer. Europe was a costly, time consuming place to raid. The Hungarians had learnt from previous reverses, and that was the final nail in the coffin of a Mongol invasion of Europe. The Mongol Blitzkreig was only really effective against those that failed to grasp Mongol tactics. Once enemy strategy had caught up, Mongol forces were open to defeat. In due course, the Teutonic Knights and the Wehrmacht (to name but two) duly suffered analagous fates. Europe was saved, again and again.

I think that, in our own separate ways, Sebastian and I are both right. We are looking from different angles. Yes, the Mongols must have been well engaged in China. They had campaigns against Bulgaria, Poland, Thrace, etc, too, each seemingly undermanned because of large actions closer to home. However, I think that the relatively small rewards in Central Europe, combined with the risks inherent in fighting a prepared and increasingly efficient enemy, also played their part in Mongol calculations.

How often are even great powers allowed but one roll of the dice?

Way of the Mongol horsemen, part 1

Last week we rode away to the northeast, seeking out the route where the Mongol horsemen rode through in 1241. With us was Tim Cope, fresh from his horseback journey from Mongolia to Hungary.

For me, the week represented not only an exploration of historic routes but an exploration too of the Mongols themselves, with Tim as guide. History tends to cast the Mongols as villains, barbaric horsemen who terrorised Western civilisation. However, the Mongols were an established civilisation, skilfully led, disciplined, meritocratic, open to diplomacy, builders of a vast empire in which trade flourished. Compared to the rival European princedoms whom they conquered, at worst poverty-stricken little fiefdoms run by sedentary despots, the Mongols represented shocking modernity.

The Great Hungarian Plain is the westernmost extremity of the Eurasian steppe, the last nomad territory before the green hills and fertile valleys of Western Europe. Here the Mongols stopped, finding  the poorest pickings of their wide conquest, the least gold and riches. It was this poverty that led them to leave Western Europe in relative peace, not armies, nor fortifications.

The photo looks over the upper Somes valley, through which the central prong of the Mongol army poured in early 1241. This was no accidental route. The Mongols sent out scouts and spies to learn about the lands that they wished to conquer, finding out which tribes might ally themselves with the newcomer, which rivalries to exploit, the strengths and weaknesses of potential enemies, which routes to use, where to give battle. After the scouts came the army, and after the army the baggage train of horses and yaks. It must have been quite a sight.

For us riding high on the mountainside, it was exciting to tread the same turf as had the Mongol scouts over seven hundred and sixty years earlier. History was made here.

Shoeing for the trail

Today was the last day before the trail riding season, making this also the last time that I will be able to post daily for a while. From tomorrow, I shall be out riding, staying at various other places each night (including Castle Dracula). I'll be back at home at weekends though.

I had agreed with one of my agents in the West that I would drive the 160km (100 miles) to Cluj-Napoca airport to meet two guests. Unfortunately, my agent didn't pass this on to my guests, who made their own way from the airport to the riding centre. That left me to drive the truck back on my own, thinking at the time that the guests must have missed their plane. (In fact they had come on an earlier flight. Yes, my agent had given me the wrong flight details.)

I took a back way for the return journey, not feeling in much of a hurry, and prefering to drive on quiet roads. I'd long meant to stop and look at a large, neatly laid out cemetry on a hillside overlooking a quiet section of road. From the road, it looks like a military cemetry (which are quite common across Eastern Europe, though not as large as the First World War cemetries on the Western Front), all the gravestones being alike. In fact, it is a Jewish cemetry. One day in September 1944, immediately before the Red Army swept through, the Hungarian fascist militia rounded up one hundred and sixty two Jews from the village of Sarmasu and, over the course of ten days, tortured and murdered them all. The Romanian language inscription on the central memorial told me this, though most of the text was in Hebrew.

Now I'm at home, I've met the two guests, and we are ready to set off tomorrow morning. The horses have all been shod using Natural Balance techniques. I've included a view of a front shoe, in which one can see the unique form of the Natural Balance shoe (with a slightly squared front and rounded profile that together allow for a natural breakover point). Borium is also visible around the perimeter of the shoe, shiny and slightly irregular, where I have applied it by arc welding so as to protect the nail heads from wear. That way, the shoes will last longer on hard surfaces. The horse has a nice wide heel too, which is a sign of healthy conformation. Incidentally, I don't have different size hands - Danny, Cornel's 11yo son, is helping me to hold up Pintea's foot.

I've added a side view too (which I haven't managed to rotate, since the image software is on Danielle's computer). It's possible to see how the Natural Balance shoe is set back to give a good breakover, like a wild horse would have. I've removed as little of the hoof capsule as possible at the toe. I know that the hoof angle is a bit less than it should be, however this is an 8yo horse that has been here for less than 9 months. His feet are better now than when he arrived here, with shorter toes, better heels, and healthier frogs. There are 3 nails on each side of the shoe, which are sufficient. (Our horses rarely loose shoes, even on steep, stony ground.) The nails are quite small too, in this case E4, on size 2 shoes (that would be size 0 in Europe, I think). I recall that we used E4 slim nails, in fact, which are the same width as E4 (so that they don't split the hoofs) but 2-3mm longer (so that we can get them to come out higher up when necessary).

The Tatar trail

There are many old roads and trails in these parts. Some 20km south of here, a well-preserved section of Roman road cuts across pastures. That was a military road, designed to get troops up to the border of the Roman Empire. About 10km north, the old “Plaiul Moldovei” or Moldavian Path runs east-west across the high open spaces of Poiana Persa. This was more of a trade road, although it had a military function too. More intriguing, however, is the “Tatar trail”, which leads diagonally on a northeast-southwest heading through the mountains.

The Tatars lived on the steppes beyond Romania, in what are now the Ukraine and Russia. The term Tatar describes a wide ranging people, the multi-ethnic descendents of the Mongols of the Golden Horde. In Romania, the Tatars are associated with invasions and raids, the last of them by the Crimean Tatars in the mid-1700’s before Catherine the Great finally annexed their territory in 1783, and this is one reason why so many of the fortified towns and churches of Transylvania and the Bucovina survive to this day. They became obsolescent relatively late in history. No doubt there was trade, too, with these people from the east.

The Tatar trail is the supposed route along which the Tatars crossed the Carpathian mountains to enter Transylvania. Running between the wide valley opening at Putna on the edge of the plains down to the Rodna valley in the northeast corner of Transylvania, this “route” is marked by geographical names such as “Tatarca” and “Turculeta”. “Sant”, too, commemorates a defensive ditch a little up the valley from the medieval fortress of Rodna. Old people are said to retain folk memories of the trail.

A local tale claims that a part of Napoleon's army retreated from Moscow along the route of the Tatar trail, another suggestion of the usefulness of this relatively easy foot and horseback route from the steppes to the Transylvania. Were these disgruntled French soldiers coming to Habsburg territory to desert?

Curiously, the Tatar trail bears scars from a more recent conflict. Strategic passes are riddled with German trenches from 1944, some clearly battered by Russian shelling. The route was well chosen, it seems, for the movement of large armies.

When I have a little time free, I shall explore this historic route, starting on the edge of the steppes, at Putna. I believe that the logical route will become clearer on the ground, on horseback, trying to look at the terrain from the perspective of a medieval traveler. His mind would have considered not just access but security too, avoiding places where he might easily have been ambushed. High, open ground was safest, followed by wide, open valleys. He would have sought day’s marches that led between safe, defensible campsites. (The Plaiul Moldovei is laid out similarly, with a long march over high hills between the safe havens of Sant and Dorna Candreni.) It will be an interesting trip from Putna to the Rodna valley, some four days on horseback. How exciting to live in a country where the historic trails from centuries ago can still be traced on the ground and in the memories of the old.

My old saddlery chest

These last days we – my four employees and I – have been renovating my saddle room. This room forms part of a 1970’s building that we incorporated into the main house when we last extended it. Reading the term “1970’s”, many people might think “nondescript brick box”. My saddle room, however, is solidly timber built with dovetail joints at the corners, and stands on dry stone foundations. The walls had been plastered in the old method, using a mixture of clay and cow dung, and then whitewashed. This finish had, after a third of a century, reached a stage of embarrassing decrepitude. So we pulled the crumbling surfaces down and re-clad the walls in planed timber. Less traditional, but much better for fixing racks for saddlery. To keep up appearances, w e painted the floor in traditional brown and the doors in that light blue that  is so common across Transylvania.

The final touch was to varnish the chest in which we keep the saddle blankets. It is an old pine chest, nearly two metres long, and just over half a metre high. Inside, there are three compartments, and the top closes with a lid. Nothing unusual, so far. This sort of chest is widely used still for storing flour and maize in rural homes. But, penciled under the lid in large figures, strangely formed as if by one unused to writing, is a date – 1942.

Back in those dark days, someone made this useful chest. In Britain, back then, there was renewed hope. Here in Transylvania, times were bad, and soon to get worse. Back at home, the Battle of Britain had been won, and people had heard the church bells ring after Alamein. Here, Hitler had annexed Transylvania and handed it over to neighbouring Hungary. Stalingrad was soon to come, where most of the Romanian army would be lost. Then, invasion by the Red Army, farewell massacres by the retreating Hungarian Army (our local history book records unnatural deaths under such headings as “killed in action”, “deportation to concentration camp”, and “beaten to death by Hungarian militia”), Communism, Stalinism, collectivization, megalomaniac dictatorship. Bad days, indeed. Decades later came the so-called “revolution” of 1989, when the communist nomenclatura took over from a communist dictator.

Finally, just now, in 2004, we shed those corrupt, repressive dinosoars. Well, some of them, anyway. It took fifteen years of “freedom” for a thinking middle class to develop, possessed by the novel concept that it could elect a liberal-democrat president in place of a communist relic.

It’s a good thing that the carpenter of 1942 hadn’t a crystal ball. He would have had to be a serious optimist not to go and hang himself from the nearest tree.