Europe: A History (15 page)
ALPI
C
ONTRARY
to first appearances, the high alpine valleys provided an excellent environment for early colonization and primitive agriculture. They possessed an abundance of sunshine, fresh water, fuel, building materials, pasture, and most importantly, security. Their remoteness was one of their assets. They were inhabited from the earliest times, and, as Hannibal discovered in the fourth century
BC,
fiercely defended. Traces of hearths found in the Drachenloch cave at 2,445 m in Switzerland’s Tamina Valley date from the Riss-Wurm interglacial. Evidence of transhumance goes back 12,000 years. Roman building works and settlements were well established, especially in Val d’Aosta and the mining district of Noricum.
1
Villages perched on impregnable rocks, such as those in the Alpes Maritimes and Haute-Provence, were immune from bandits, invaders, and tax-collectors.
In medieval times, many alpine communities established a distinct political independence. The Swiss cantons are not the only example. The 52 communes of Briançon obtained a charter of liberties in 1343, six years before the Dauphin of Vienne sold the rest of his patrimony and his title to the King of France. They maintained their self-government until the Revolution.
Other districts avoided close control by the lack of communications. Barcelonnette, founded by the Counts of Provence and Barcelona, was ceded to France with the Pays d’Ubaye by the Treaty of Utrecht. But it could only be approached by a 15-hour mule trek until the permanent road was built in 1883. The villages of the Gorges du Verdón were not linked to the outside world until 1947. The lowest pass in the western Alps, the Col de I’Échelle, still does not possess an all-weather road on both sides.
Many roads were built for strategic reasons. An obelisk atop the Montgenèvre (1,054 m) announces in French, Latin, Italian, and Spanish that the route was opened for carriages in 1807 ‘while the Emperor Napoleon was triumphing over his enemies on the Oder and Vistula’. The highest road in Europe, over the Col du Galibier (3,242 m) was built in the 1930s as part of France’s frontier defences.
The
Alpenraum
was exploited most intensively in the second half of the nineteenth century, when mixed farming was pushed to high altitudes, and the rural population rose dramatically. Yet the advent of modern communications provoked a mass exodus, reflected in the old Savoyard complaint:
Toujours ma chèvre monte et ma femme descend
. (My goat is always going up, and my wife going down.) The trend was reaching crisis proportions in many localities until the growth of hydroelectricity and mass tourism, especially winter skiing, after 1945.
2
The antiquity and peculiarities of alpine life have inspired a wealth of specialized museums. The doyen is the Museo della Montagna, founded in 1874 in Turin. The Ethnographic Museum at Geneva, like many smaller ones, specializes in the tools, buildings, ceramic stoves, and folk art of alpine communities.
GOTTHARD
T
HE
St Gotthard Pass commands the shortest passage across the central Alps. It can fairly claim to be Europe’s most vital artery. By joining the valley of the Reuss, which flows northward into the Rhine, and the valley of the Ticino, which flows southwards into the Po, it provides the most direct link between southern Germany and northern Italy. At 2,108 m. it is significantly lower than its main rivals, which stay closed for longer periods during winter and bad weather. (See Appendix III, p. 1219.)
It is interesting that the St Gotthard route did not become a major thoroughfare until relatively late. It was not developed by the Romans, who preferred the more westerly passes, especially the Great St Bernard, the
Mons Jovis
. Nor was it used during the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, despite the constant migrations from north to south. The problem lay with a short section of the upper Reuss valley, which for some three miles north of the modern Andermatt enters a precipitous rocky canyon. This Schollenen Gorge, whose upper entrance is lined with sheer cliffs, was sufficient to defy all traffic until extensive engineering works were undertaken. The works began some time after
AD
1200. The entrance to the gorge was spanned by the magnificent single arch of the Devil’s Bridge, whose lofty construction must have been no less demanding than the vault of a Gothic cathedral. At the steepest passage of the defile, rock-steps known as
scaliones
or
Schollen
were cut into the cliff, together with supports for the wooden platforms which were suspended alongside the overhangs. By
AD
1300, when the hospice at the summit of the pass was dedicated to St Gotthard, Bishop of distant Hildesheim, it is clear that the flow of travellers had become steady and regular.
For nearly 600 summers the St Gotthard road served from June to November as Europe’s premier north-south trail. From Altdorf at the head of Lake Lucerne to Biasca at the head of the Levantina, the stream of pilgrims, merchants, and soldiers faced 60 miles of rough climbing over four or five stages. The southern approach, through the eerie Valle Tremola or ‘Valley of Trembling’, the source of the translucent mineral called tremo-lite, was hardly less daunting than the Devil’s Bridge. The zigzag path could only be negotiated by pack mules, by litters, and by foot travellers. Before the widening of the track in 1830, the only person to cross the pass in a wheeled vehicle was the Englishman Charles Greville, who won a bet in 1775 by paying a team of Swiss guides to carry his phaeton on their shoulders all the way.
The opening of the St Gotthard had important strategic consequences. It gave a particular stimulus to the Swiss district of Uri, the guardian of the pass, and hence to the Swiss Confederation as a whole. It enabled armies to march swiftly from Germany to Lombardy and back, a facility exploited by numerous emperors, and most notably by General Suvorov’s Russians in 1799.
The construction of the St Gotthard railway in 1882 was no less remarkable than that of the St Gotthard road. It required a main tunnel of 15 km. under the summit, together with 80 others. At the famous
Pfaffensprung
or ‘Parson’s Leap’ above Goschenen, trains enter the spiral trackway travelling right and emerge several hundred feet higher up travelling left. It cost the lives of many workmen, among them its designer. The railway tunnel has been joined since 1980 by a 16.5 km motorway tunnel, which carries six lanes of vehicles in all weathers and all seasons. Motor cyclists, who hug their machines as they themselves are hugged by leather-suited pil-lionesses, scream over the pass in minutes.
Yet modern travellers who stop by the Devil’s Bridge can see a curious monument built into the rock beneath the modern viaduct. The inscription, in Tsarist Cyrillic, may be translated:
TO THE VALIANT COMPANIONS OF FIELD MARSHAL COUNT SUVOROV-RIMNITSKY, PRINCE OF ITALY, WHO LOST THEIR LIVES DURING THE MARCH ACROSS THE ALPS IN
1799.
2
Raised on the centenary of that march, it is a suitable reminder both of the unity of Europe and of the grandeur of its mountains.
Political disunity may well explain some of the cultural unities which persist across state frontiers in the Mediterranean. One deep-rooted feature has been found in the existence of‘parallel authorities’, such as that of the Mafia in southern Italy, which defy all efforts to suppress them.
7
For most of recorded history, the peoples inhabiting the northern shores of the Mediterranean have outnumbered their southern neighbours by at least two to one, and hence have played a dominant role. A demographic explosion in North Africa promises to upset the traditional balance. In any case, the ‘Mediterranean lands’ have never been confined to the countries on the immediate shoreline. In Europe, the Mediterranean watershed lies far to the north, taking in Bavaria, Transylvania, and Ukraine. No power or culture, not even Rome, has ever united all of these.
Similar patterns are observable in the history of Europe’s other enclosed seas—the Baltic and the Black Sea. The Baltic came to prominence at a relatively late date. It was the focus in Hansa times for German commercial expansion, and in the seventeenth century for Sweden’s bid for glory. Yet no single Baltic power ever achieved the long dreamt-of
dominium marts
. German, Swedish,
Danish, Polish, and Russian rivalry has kept the Baltic disunited to the present day.
8
[HANSA]
The Black Sea—first known to the ancients as the
Axenos
or ‘Inhospitable’, later as the
Euxine
or ‘Hospitable’ and then as the Pontus—is the Mediterranean’s siamese twin. It has passed through phases of Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman dominance. Yet there again, the rise of a major landpower in Russia led to lasting divisions. Until the 1990s, the Soviet Union and its satellites faced NATO’s southern flank in Turkey across hostile waters. More seriously, perhaps, much of the Black Sea is anoxic—that is, it is so heavily impregnated with hydrogen sulphide (H
2
S) that ‘its depths form the largest mass of lifeless water in the world’. If‘turnover’ of the water strata were to occur, it would provoke ‘the worst natural cataclysm to strike the earth since the last Ice Age’.
9
Since undisputed command of Europe’s seas has proved impossible, special attention has inevitably been given to their three strategic gateways. The Straits of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles, and the Danish Sound have handed inordinate power and influence to the states that control them,
[SUND]
4.
The mainland trunk of
the Peninsula is amplified by several large sub-peninsulas which protrude into the surrounding seas. One such mountainous promontory, Scandinavia, adjoins the Baltic. Three others—Iberia, Italy, and the Balkan massif—adjoin the Mediterranean. Two more—Crimea and Caucasus—adjoin
the Black Sea. Each of them, though physically joined to the Continent, has more readily been approached by sea than by land.
SUND
L
IKE
its southern counterpart at the Straits of Gibraltar, the Danish Sound . has been called Europe’s jugular vein. Controlling the sole point of entry to a major sea, it possessed immense strategic and commercial value.
1
Its potential was first realized in 1200, when King Canute VI of Denmark imprisoned some Lübeck merchants until they paid for the right of passage into the Baltic herring grounds. From then on, the Sound Dues were exacted for as long as the Danes could enforce them. They were accepted by other medieval Baltic powers such as Poland, the Teutonic State, and the Hansa, and survived Sweden’s challenge in the seventeenth century. They declined after 1732, but continued in being until the Redemption Treaty of 1857 when British naval power finally persuaded the Danes to commute their ancient interest. Even then, the Sound remained important until Prussia acquired Kiel in 1866 and by-passed the Sound by building the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal (1895). Once aeroplanes could overfly them, all maritime straits, including the English Channel, lost much of their strategic significance. All that is left is the memory of greatness, a ferry crossing, and the shade of Hamlet’s Ghost on the battlements at Elsinore.
Scandinavia
, once the site of the shrinking European ice-cap, could never support a large population. But its wild, western fiords are tempered by the Gulf Stream; the mountains are rich in minerals; and the morainic lakes left by the retreating ice are abundant in fish. What the Scandinavians lack in terms of climate, they have gained from a secure home base.
The Iberian Peninsula
consists largely of a lofty tableland, separated from the rest of the Continent by the high peaks of the Pyrenees. Its eastern seaboard forms part of the Mediterranean world, and in early times was drawn successively into the Carthaginian, Roman, and Muslim spheres. But much of the arid interior is drawn through the valleys of the Douro, the Tagus, and the Guadalquivir towards the Atlantic. Hence, in modern times whilst Aragon expanded eastward into the Mediterranean, Portugal and Castile moved confidently to the western ocean. They were Europe’s first colonial powers, and they once divided the world between them.
Italy is
the most perfect of peninsulas. The alpine barrier to the north is seamless. The plain of the Po forms a rich natural larder. The long, craggy ‘leg and toe’ shelter a large number of fertile, impregnable valleys with ready access to the sea. Some of these Italian localities have been rich and extrovert; one of them, Rome, gave rise to the largest empire of the ancient world. But after Rome’s decline they could so defend their independence that Italy was not reunited again for almost 2,000 years.
The Balkan Peninsula
is far less welcoming than Italy. Its interior is more arid; the mountains, from the Dinaric Alps to the Rhodopes, more stony; the valleys more remote, the sea less accessible. Its main function in history has been to preserve the tenacious communities which cling to its soil, and which block the direct passage between the Mediterranean and the Danube Basin.
The peninsularity of
Crimea
—formerly known as Taurus—was emphasized by its hinterland on the Ukrainian steppe, which was not permanently settled until recent times. It looks to the sea, the sun, and the south, and formed part of successive east Mediterranean civilizations until conquered by the Russian Empire in 1783.
[
CHERSONESOS
]
The Caucasus
, too, has many peninsular characteristics. Although it is physically joined to land at both ends, to Europe in the north and to Asia in the south, the mountains which ring it on the landward side are so massive that its activities have inevitably been channelled seawards. The ridge of the Greater Caucasus, which tops 18,000 ft (5,486 m), is significantly higher than the Alps or the Carpathians. The Lesser Caucasus to the south attains a similar elevation on Mt Ararat (16,786 ft or 5,165 m). The inhabitants of the Caucasus are Eurasians in more senses than one.
[CAUCASIA]
