Note 1227 — Chapter XV · —Mountain Barriers And Their Passes

Farther to the west, the wall of highlands stretching across southern Europe is interrupted by a deep groove formed by the mountain-flanked Rhone Valley and the Pass of Belfort, or Burgundian Gate, which lies between the Vosges and Jura system, and connects the Rhone road with the long rift valley of the middle Rhine. This pass, broad and low (350 meters or 1148 feet) marks the insignificant summit in the great historic route of travel between the Mediterranean and the North Sea, from the days of ancient Etruscan merchants to the present. This was the route of the invading Teuton hordes which the Roman Marius defeated at Aquae Sextiae, and later, of the Germans under Ariovistus, whom Cæsar defeated near the present Mühlhausen. Four centuries afterward came the Alamannians, Burgundians and other Teutonic stocks, who infused a tall blond element into the population of the Rhone Valley.1227 The Pass of Belfort is the strategic key to Central Europe. Here Napoleon repeatedly fixed his military base for the invasion of Austria, and hither was directed one division of the German army in 1870 for the invasion of France. The gap is traversed to-day by a canal connecting the Doubs and the Rhine and by a railroad, just as formerly by the tracks of migrating barbarians.