Rhine Cruises – Treading in the footsteps of Romans and Franks When the Rhein River was a boundary.
Rhine cruises
pass through some of the oldest waterways in Western Europe and this area would have had some of the earliest political boundaries in Europe. Despite this fact the Rhine cruises fail to emphasis the early historical divisions along the German Rhein. Long before Rhine cruises and european riverboat cruises in early prehistoric times the river Rhein would have been flanked by villages along both banks. In those days all early civilisations would have been built along the banks of Europe’s major rivers because there was no other way of getting water. Native Germanic tribes lived on the lower reaches of the River and the Celts were along the upper reaches. Technically these were not classed as a boundary because both sides and banks were inhabited by the same peoples.
When Julius Caesar waged his campaigns to suppress the Franks as the French were called in 55 and 53 BC he used the River Rhein as a natural political boundary which marked the end of the kingdom of the Roman kingdom of Franks. This area corresponds to the modern region from Lake Constance to the mouth of the Rhine River at Neth in Holland. Although this boundary was short-lived it did create a historical precedent and later the French claimed the German Rhine as a natural boundary. The boundary did not last because the Emperor Augustus established Germanic settlements on both sides of the River and called them Germania Superior and Germania Inferior
Eventually the Roman Empire was fighting internal dissension and too many borders and it did disintegrate because the Roman soldiers were not sufficient to defend all its borders. By 406 it was populated by Germanic tribes, but the River Rhine later became a boundary to the Carolingian empire. The Carolingian Empire came from a family of Frankish aristocrats who ruled Western Europe from 750- 887 most of them were Charles or Charlemagne. Once the Carolingian Empire fell the Rhine became the central axis of the Holy Roman Empire. However this empire moved ever eastwards and the Germanic connection along the River Rhine became less crucial.
Eventually the French advanced along the Eastern banks of the German Rhine and during the Thirty years war (1618–48) they fought for it. When Louis XIV as came to power the German domination of the banks of the Rhine was broken when they acquired Alsace. After the French revolution the French aggressively attempted to extend its Eastern boundary and the Confederation of the Rhine established by Napoleon included part of what had been Northern Germany in its borders.
Germany did not unify until Bismarck in 1870 and the rise of nationalism in Germany began at the end of Napoleonic domination of Europe. The congress of Vienna left France in possession of Alsace and it meant that they had legitimately acquired a border on the German Rhein River. However a German historian was to state that
“The Rhine is Germany’s river, not its boundary.”
France lost Alsace to Germany in the Franco-German War (1870–71) and it was not to regain it until after World War 1 on June 28, 1919.
To day rhine cruises enable us to ponder what it was like to live in those historic times. Times when cruising was far from the minds of those trying to eke out a living along the river banks.
So if you are lucky enough to travel on any of these european riverboat cruises on the rhein river spare a thought for the men and women of those days. Life on the river banks was simple but equally dangerous.
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