The Moselle Cycle Route. Mike Wells

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      The equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I at Deutsches Eck in Koblenz (Stage 14)

      The Prussians arrive

      Despite a final rally to arms in 1840, when France threatened to invade the Rhineland, this was the end of France as the expansionary aggressor. Power now turned steadily to the east. By 1870 the Prussians, led by the ‘Iron Chancellor’ Bismarck, had succeeded in unifying Germany, and during the Franco–Prussian War (1870–1871) they captured much of eastern France and threatened Paris. The treaty that ended this war gave the west bank of the Rhine (Alsace) and the Moselle département of Lorraine (including the industrial cities of Metz and Thionville) to a newly established German Empire. French refugees from these areas arrived in the rest of Lorraine, giving a stimulus to the growth of industry, particularly textiles, in towns like Épinal along the Moselle.

      German occupation lasted nearly 50 years. During this period the French language was supressed and a process of Germanisation carried out (as a legacy of this time, the trains in Alsace and northern Lorraine run on the right, compared with on the left in the rest of France). German control lasted until 1919, when the treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War (1914–1918), returned Alsace and the Moselle département to France, ordered German military withdrawal from the Rhineland and created a small buffer state (Saarland) between France and Germany. Under French rule (1919–1940) a reverse process occurred, with the German language banned. In 1935 Germany, now under Nazi control, reoccupied the Rhineland and Saarland. A brief period of draconian German occupation of France (1940–1944) occurred during the Second World War, followed by a final return to French rule after the defeat of Nazi Germany. There were families whose sons fought for Germany in 1914–1918, then began the Second World War fighting for France, only to be re-conscripted into the German army in 1940, most probably fighting and dying on the eastern front.

      All these years of conflict have left the region peppered with military hardware, from Roman fortifications, through medieval castles and fortified military towns to integrated defensive lines and concrete anti-tank defences, each passing into history as the technological progress of warfare made them redundant. The great French fort builders Vauban (1633–1707), Séré de Rivières (1815–1895) and Maginot (1877–1932) all left their mark. Riverside settlements still show the scars of battle, particularly from the Second World War, where intensive bombing was followed by destructive land warfare and fierce fighting as Allied forces tried to cross the river. This is evident especially in the bridges, which were almost all destroyed during 1944–1945 and have been subsequently rebuilt.

      Sentry duty outside Luxembourg Grand Ducal Palace (Stage 9A)

      Luxembourg

      Throughout this period, Luxembourg too has suffered at the hands of its French and German neighbours. Having been an important member of the HRE (three of its 14th and 15th-century dukes became Holy Roman Emperor) it lost its independence in 1437 when power passed to the Burgundians. Over the following centuries control alternated between Bourbon French, Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs, Napoleonic French, Prussia and the Netherlands, with Luxembourg losing over 75 per cent of its original territory in land grabs by France (1659), Prussia (1815) and Belgium (1839). Since 1815 the country has had a close relationship with the Netherlands, even sharing a joint monarchy until 1890. Despite a policy of neutrality, Luxembourg was invaded by Germany in both the First and Second World Wars.

      The modern era

      The 500-year history of the Moselle basin being a pawn between French- and German-speaking nations may now finally have ended with the entry of France, Germany and Luxembourg into the European Union (1958), as well as the highly symbolic 1985 Schengen Agreement, a treaty signed on a boat on the Moselle near the village of Schengen, at the point at which the borders of French Lorraine, German Rheinland-Pfalz and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg meet. This treaty led to the free movement of people across European borders and the removal of border controls between countries. As a result, many of the residents of Thionville in France now work across the old ‘border’ in Luxembourg or Germany, and the borderlands have been designated as a European cross-border super region called Saarlorlux.

      The birthplace of Karl Marx in Trier, now a museum (Stage 9)

      River transport

      The river itself has a history independent of the political struggle happening around it. Navigation has been going on since at least Roman times. At Neumagen a stone carving of a Roman wine ship was discovered in the 19th century. This is now in the Landesmuseum in Trier, but a concrete copy stands in Neumagen and a full-size replica wooden Roman galley is moored nearby.

      A steady process of improving navigation over the centuries led to the removal of tolls and riverine obstructions, the installation of locks and dams to control water flow and the construction of towpaths. Haulage, which had been initially manual or horse-drawn, gave way in the 20th century to moto-tractors and then motorised barges. A major post-Second World War canalisation programme resulted in the opening of the river to larger vessels (up to 110m long) as far as Metz in 1964, Frouard (for Nancy) in 1972 and Neuves-Maisons, 392km and 28 locks upstream from Koblenz, in 1979. Between Frouard and Toul this led to the closure of a short stretch of the Canal de la Marne au Rhin and redirection СКАЧАТЬ