Europe of the Standard Gauge

Abstract

Convened to reconstruct Europe after the defeat of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna, hosted by Austrian Emperor Franz I, lasted from September 1814 to June 1815. Alongside many other points on the agenda, the negotiators wanted to establish a general principle that international rivers should be free “with a view to facilitate the communication between nations and continually to render them less strangers to one another.”¹ This idea was so revolutionary that Count Ernst zu Münster, representing the Kingdom of Hanover, complained that the interests of his kingdom to collect taxes were being sacrificed for “some vague ideas about the liberty of commerce.”² Vague as these ideas may have been, they nevertheless signaled a new interest in stimulating trade for the sake of progress and peace. They not only found expression in a new regime for river Rhine shipping, but also in plans for connecting the main European rivers. Thus, in 1822 the Austrian emperor’s Imperial and Royal Trade Commission initiated a project to link the Danube with the Moldau (Vltava).³ It centered on a canal, but also contained a small railway link through the šumava Mountains between Linz and Budweis (České Budějovice).