It is safe to say that no waterway in Europe has more frequently witnessed the march of vast armies or heard more frequently the echoed roll of battle than has the broadly sweeping Danube. In its wide and fertile valley have met in deadly conflict the well-trained legions of a Prince Eugene of Savoy, a Gustavus Adolphus, a Marlborough, a Bonaparte, and on the issue of the battles in which they were engaged were decided the fate of nations and the course of civilization.
Augustus, it was, who made the Danube the northern boundary of the Roman Empire. It extended like a broad and impassable moat from the Schwartzwald to the Euxine, and, like the Rhine on the East of Gaul, served to keep the barbarians of the north confined within their primeval forests. All along the Danube from its source to its delta are still found countless traces of what were once important military outposts, flourishing towns and centers of advancing civilization and culture.
After passing through the picturesque gorge of Wachau, famed for its wild scenery, its haunted castles, its oak-covered heights, its precipitous crags once crowned by massive strongholds which were tenanted by robber knights who were long the terror of the surrounding country, we enter an extensive plain which the branching Danube cuts into a number of willow and birch-covered islands. Soon, on the right, we reach the mouth of the river Traisen, near whose confluence with the Danube stands Traisenmauer, noted in the Nibelungenlied as being the home of Helka, Etzel’s first queen, and the last stopping place of Kriemhild before her arrival at Tulna, where the King of the Huns was awaiting her.
The progress of the brilliant cavalcade, with all its glittering pomp and pageantry, composed of
Good knights of many a region and many a foreign tongue,
from Tulna to Vienna and thence to the capital of the Huns, is best told in the simple words of the Nibelungenlied:
From Tulna to Vienna their journey then they made.
There found they many a lady adorned in all her pride
To welcome with due honor King Etzel’s noble bride.
Held was the marriage festal on Whitsuntide