And he embarked at Ratisbon
To fight the Saracen.
These Crusaders and others that followed them down the Danube on their way to the Holy Land so exasperated the Demon that “he plucked up rocks from the neighboring cliffs and pitched them right into the channel of the river, thereby hoping to arrest their progress. But in this he was completely deceived; for after the first rock came plunging down amongst them, every man made the sign of the cross, and uniting their voices in a holy anthem, the fiend was instantly paralyzed, and slunk away without further resistance. So huge, however, was the first stone he threw that for ages it caused a swirl and a swell in this part of the river which nothing but the skill and perseverance of the Bavarian engineers could remove.”[6]
As the Danube moves majestically between ever recurring islets, green with willow and birch, and wooded heights crowned with ruins of castles and monasteries telling of times long past, the veil of romance, with which legend invests everything, seems to become heavier and more variegated. Here are elf-haunted glens and primeval forests which were once declared to be the home of the Erl-King. There is the dark cavern where the lindwurm, like the one slain by Siegfried, lay in wait for his prey, and at still another spot is the lakelet where Hagen met the swan-maidens on his return with the Nibelungs to the lands of the Huns. Further down the stream are the Strudel and Wirbel, the Scylla and Charybdis of the Danube, for ages the reputed trysting-place of all kinds of phantoms and monsters.
But here in
Imperial Danube’s rich domain
sober history has far more to recount than saga and legend, for every spot we pass has its story of ambition, intrigue and revenge; of wars involving the loss of thrones and far-reaching changes in the map of the then known world.
At Dürrenstein, further down the river, are the ruins of a great feudal stronghold in which is still shown the dungeon in which tradition says Richard Coeur de Lion, on his return from the Third Crusade, was imprisoned by his inexorable enemy, Duke Leopold of Austria. The legend, telling how the English King’s liberation was finally effected through his devoted minstrel, Blondel, has long been a favorite theme of poets and artists.[7]
It was not far from Dürrenstein that Julian the Apostate engaged a flotilla for his famous voyage down the Danube—the beginning of that long campaign which was to end so disastrously for him and his army on the sun-parched banks of the far distant Tigris.
At a subsequent period Charlemagne and his Paladins descended the Danube on his campaign against the Avars. Later on he was followed by numerous contingents of Crusaders, among them heroic Barbarossa and his valiant band, on their way to Constantinople and the Holy Land.