Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Anatolian Peninsula seeking new lands to cultivate some 7,000 years ago. Five millennia
later, the Persian King Darius led his vast army along the same route before crossing the
Danube in his campaign against the Scythians. The river was established as a corridor for
trade by the ancient Greeks and during Roman times, when the Danube was used both as a
defensive barrier and as a supply line to feed and equip the legionnaires stationed along it.
Europe's Christian military forces used the Danube as a pathway for heading towards Byz-
antium and the Holy Land during the times of the Crusades a thousand years ago, and in
the 16th century the Danube provided the route for a reverse crusade when Suleiman the
Magnificent brought Islam westwards from the Black Sea. In the 1520s, the Ottoman Turks
took Belgrade, defeated Hungry, and advanced to the walls of Vienna. They held Budapest
for 150 years before being driven back down the Danube.
Trade along the Danube gave rise to two major empires, the Austrian and Hungarian,
which merged under the Habsburgs, known to German-speakers as the
Donaumonarchie
,
or 'Danube Monarchy'. Maria Theresa, archduchess of Austria and queen of Hungary and
Bohemia, founded an imperial government department to oversee navigation on the river.
Today, the 'prince of all European rivers', as Napoleon Bonaparte liked to call the Danube,
flows through four of the continent's capital cities (Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, and Bel-
grade) and through, or along the borders of, ten countries. Its role as an important artery
for European trade has continued, and navigation along the entire river has been promoted
since the first Danubian Commission was set up in the 19th century. The International
Commission for the Protection of the Danube River, established in 1998, works to ensure
the sustainable and equitable use of freshwater resources in the entire Danube Basin, in-
cluding the improvement of water quality and the development of mechanisms for flood
and accident control.
Given the important role played by this river throughout the history of Europe, its reflection
in various aspects of European culture is not unexpected. Before Bernini's Four Rivers
Fountain in Rome, the Danube had spawned a school of landscape painting in the 16th
century. Some 200 years later, it became the subject of a famous musical waltz by Johann
Strauss the Younger. These examples serve to illustrate some of the many ways in which
rivers have presented stimulation and inspiration to writers and artists, a subject examined
in more detail in the next chapter.
