engulf Transylvania: while Iancu welcomed the transition, he was indignant at the fact that Hungarian revolutionaries (many of whom were landowners) refused to debate the abolition of serfdom (which at the time was the state of the larger part of the Romanian population in Transylvania). In the Apuseni Mountains, he started rallying peasants in Câmpeni. The protests he organized were recognized as peaceful by the authorities, but nevertheless worried them. Iancu and his associate Ioan Buteanu quickly became the main figures of the Romanian-led actions in the area, especially after they took part in the Blaj Assemblies starting in April, where over 40,000 Romanians met to protest against Transylvania becoming a part of Hungary. In Blaj (; ) both opted for the main, radical wing of the movement. Centered on Alexandru Papiu Ilarian, the group opposed the Hungarian revolutionary option of uniting Transylvania and Hungary. It got into conflict with the minority wing around Greek-Catholic Bishop Ioan Lemeni, one which chose not to boycott the elections for the Hungarian Parliament. While the union was carried of on May 30, 1848, the majority of Romanian activists looked towards Vienna and Emperor Ferdinand, sharing the cause of the Transylvanian Saxons. Things became heated after July 11, when Hungary declared its independence. Austria started to open itself to the Romanian demands, while bloody conflicts ensued between the Hungarian nobles and their Romanian serfs. The last Assembly in Blaj saw the Habsburg governor, Anton Freiherr von Puchner, approve of the arming of National Guards for Romanians and Saxons. On September 27, the lynching of Austrian plenipotentiary Count Lemberg by a Pest crowd cut off any dialogue between the two centers. The new Emperor Franz Joseph and the Austrian government granted the Romanians numerous liberties and rights; although Lajos Kossuth's government abolished serfdom, this was no longer a match for the Imperial offer. Conflict Outbreak The Austrians clearly rejected the October demand that the ethnical criteria become the basis for internal borders, with the goal of creating a province for Romanians (Transylvania grouped alongside Banat and Bukovina), as they did not want to replace the threat of Hungarian nationalism with the potential of Romanian separatism. Yet they did not declare themselves hostile to the rapid creation of Romanian administrative offices within Transylvania. The territory was organized in ("prefectures"), with Avram Iancu and Buteanu as two prefects in the Apuseni. Iancu's prefecture, the Auraria Gemina (a