The Saxon colony adjoining the Szekler area on the west is also a relic of medieval strategic necessities. In spite of the name by which this German settlement is designated, its original members appear to have been recruited from different sections of western European regions occupied by Teutons.[158] Colonization had already been started when King Gesa II of Hungary gave it a fresh impulse, in the middle of the twelfth century, by inducing peasants of the middle Rhine and Moselle valleys to exchange servitude in their native villages for land ownership in the Transylvania area.[159] To promote the efficiency of these colonists as frontier guardsmen an unusual degree of political latitude was accorded them. In time their deputies sat in the Hungarian diet on terms of equality with representatives of the nobility. Prolonged warfare with the Tatar populations who attempted to force entrance into the Hungarian plains, led to the selection of strategical sites as nuclei of original settlements. These facts account for the survival of the Teutonic groups in the midst of Rumanians and Hungarians. Today the so-called Saxon area does not constitute a single group, but consists of separate agglomerations clustered in the vicinity of the passes and defiles which the ancestors of the Teutons were called upon to defend. The upper valley of the Oltu and its mountain affluents, in the rectangle inclosed between the towns of Hermannstadt, Fogaras, Mediasch and Schässburg, contain at present the bulk of this Austrian colony of German ancestry. [Illustration: FIG. 42--View of the Transylvanian plateau near the western edge of the Carpathians. Hosszufalu (Langendorf) in the distance.] The Rumanian problem in Hungary is mainly economic. The chief aim of Hungarians is to maintain political supremacy in the provinces containing a majority of the Romance-speaking element. The Rumanian communities are scattered over an area of about 76,000 square miles (122,278 sq. kms.) which comprises Transylvania and its old “exterior” counties as well as the Banat. This region is peopled by 6,305,666 inhabitants according to recent census figures. Of these 87.8 per cent consist of peasants. The number of Rumanians is officially estimated at 2,932,214. Rumanian students, however, point to official Austrian returns for the year 1840 which placed the number of their countrymen at 2,202,000[160] and lay stress on the coefficient of increase for the period 1870 to 1910, which is 15.5 per thousand in Rumania and 10.8 per thousand in Hungary. Applying the Rumanian rate to the Rumanian subjects of the Hapsburgs they find that their kinsmen in Hungary ought to number approximately 3,536,000. Otherwise it is necessary to admit that between 1840 and 1890 Magyars increased 54 per cent, and Rumanians only 17 per cent, in spite of the recognized fact that Rumanian peasants have larger families than their Hungarian masters.[161]