185 
THE STRATEGICAL GEOGRAPHY 
OF 
EUROPE, 
BY 
T. M. MAGUIRE, ESQ., 
(Inns of Court Rifle Volunteers). 
(Notes of a Lecture delivered at the Royal Artillery Institution, Woolwich, 
Monday, November 28th, 1892.;) 
Colonel C. C. Trench, R.A., Director Artillery College, in the Chair. 
This Lecture should be read with a Modern Atlas of Europe. 
Colonel Trench and Gentlemen, 
The historical portion of the subject which we are about to 
discuss, as far as the short time at our disposal will allow, would be in 
point of fact nothing less than the whole story of the fall of the Roman 
Empire, and then again the origin and development of modern European 
civilization since the fall of the mediaeval system. The Mediterranean, 
the lines of the Danube and the Rhine, and their affluents, that portion 
of Italy which may be called Continental, and the great plain from the 
heart of the Russian Empire to the north of the Carpathians, and the 
Riesengeberge and Erzegiberge, and the Thuringian Wald to the German 
Ocean—here are the theatres over which generations after generations 
of the various races of Europe have wrestled for mastery ; crowding 
on one’s brain as one looks at the map are memories of the great 
makers of history and destroyers of thrones, all traversing the same 
war paths backwards and forwards from east to west and north to 
south—Romans and Carthaginians striving for the Mediterranean on 
the same principles which have led the English to plant the Union Jack 
at the pillars of Hercules, in Malta and in Cyprus, and the French to 
seize Corsica and to acknowledge in the 19th century the prescience 
of the Phoenicians by reviving their triumphs at the fortress of Biserta. 1 
It was by almost the same routes that Hannibal, after his conquest of 
Spain, and Napoleon, two thousand years later, led their spoilers into 
the valley of the Po, and thence through the Italian Peninsula. 
From the Middle Rhine the troops of Turenne and of Napoleon in 
turn advanced into the centre of Germany. The Elbe and the Oder 
saw the warlike daring of Gustavus Adolphus, of Frederick the 
Great, and of Napoleon. The hordes of Attila crossed the Rhine in his 
awful advance in the 5th century to Orleans and Chalons at the same 
passages as were traversed by the corps of Moltke in 1870. Cartha- 
1 See Appendix. 
4. VOL. XX. 
24 
