Soundtrack:
Albert Lortzing - Overture to Undine
*Dresden* *exterior* *we see people wandering through the recently dried out streets [2]* *the streets are spotted with the various rubbish - both carried out of houses flanking the street and carried from the river*
*cut to Vienna* *interior of Schonbrunn *
Frankie: so we have floods all the way from Heidelberg and Mainz on the Rhine, to Silesia, Moravia and Saxony on the Elbe?
Albrecht of Teschen: yes.
Leopold of Baden: *nods*
Archduke Stephan: at least Hungary has been spared this time around.
Frankie: no need to sound so smug, Pista. What we
need is a solution.
Albrecht: there's the idea of an electro-magnetic telegraph between Vienna and the local areas [3]- like what Henri's doing in France-
Leopold: that's a bandage for a bullet wound. It's treating the symptoms, your Imperial Highness, not the disease. Although *looks at Stephan* perhaps his Imperial Highness is right and that we should look at how the Hungarians have managed to avoid it.
*silence at the table*
Frankie: *to Stephan* well, don't leave us in suspense.
Stephan: *points to map* the Danube, the Tisza, the Waag and the Maros...have benefited from the engineers regulating them. In some cases, as far back as 1830 already [4]. It's not always effective, but its managed to...mitigate the loss due to the flooding. I admit, that the system isn't perfect, but at least it's doing something.
Frankie: so you suggest we try to have the engineers try to regulate the Rhine?
Stephan: back in 1830 there was some contention about it though. Can't remember who the guy was but he and a few others pointed out that clearing the trees along the banks for crops and towpaths. We saw it again with the Buda flood a few years ago, some who oppposed the building of the embankments...they *dismissive tone* suggested that it's because we've put things in the river- embankments, bridge pillars, artificial islands- that the river floods more readily-
Frankie: isn't that confusing the cause and the effect? Since we put the embankments in place to
stop the flooding, the embankments didn't
cause the flooding?
Stephan: the argument was that the river floods because we've narrowed the bed, if I recall correctly.
Frankie: the river floods because there is more water than normal- whether it was due to more rain, more snow or because there is a blockage downstream that the river cannot pass- it's going to flood whether we narrow the bed or not, surely. There are some things that truly do not take a genius to figure out.
Leopold: there is the "straightening" that Herr Tulla [5] undertook?
Frankie: did the Rhine not still flood?
Leopold: not as badly as it could've
Gustaf Vasa: but it still flooded.
Leopold: it still flooded.
Stephan: and according to the Buda studies a few years ago argued that when there's an embankment, it takes longer for the water to drain away anyway-
Gustaf: does it?
Stephan: that's inconclusive. After all, as his Serene Highness points out, it's going to flood regardless.
Albrecht: if only there was a body of people who could investigate this.
Frankie: this isn't the Encyclopedie, Albrecht [6], we can talk about investigating whether or not Herr Tulla or Archduke Joseph's methods are more effective at a later point. For now, we are faced with the matter of how to try to...deal with this mess. Apparently some Berlin padres are already trumpeting that somehow this is God's punishment on Austria for depriving Prussia of her territories in Silesia, Saxony and the Rhineland.
Gustaf: *idly* how does that work, exactly? Because Austria took those lands, because Saxony got those lands, the weaver's revolt last year and the floods this year are divine punishment. But if we'd left those lands in Prussian hands, would it have been seen as a divine punishment because they didn't give it to us?
Frankie: I'll leave such discussion to the theologians. Unless God wishes to provide a solution to the floodings here.
Albrecht: what if we were to centralize the problem?
Frankie: the solution to a problem is seldom more government, Albrecht.
Albrecht: no...*looks at map* hear me out...this can actually go hand-in-hand with the whole telegraph idea.
*couple groans like "not this again"*
Frankie: fine...let's hear how this all ties together, Albrecht.
Albrecht: *half surprised that everyone is looking at him* *but launches in with gusto* as the situation now stands, regardless of whether you have a flood in Hungary, Silesia, the Rhineland or Venice...the response is local. You have a bunch of people all working separately to sort this problem out. West of the Danube, you have a dozen or more separate
Wasserbaudirektions in each province. In Hungary, it's the property-owners, the community and there are the occasional private companies doing the same job-
Stephan: you want a Wasserbaudirektion in Hungary?
Albrecht: not exactly. What I was thinking is that there's a lot of people falling over one another's feet. This one doesn't co-operate with that one because they are arguing about where the county line stops.
Frankie: so you want a
single directorate?
Albrecht: I was thinking more like a ministry, actually.
Frankie: dear Lord, first a ministry for education, now a ministry for water affairs.
Albrecht: it would ensure that no voice is higher than the emperor's regarding this matter. Prussia, England and Bavaria already have it. As I understand it, the main problem in Saxony is that the parts they recently reacquired from Prussia haven't been brought in line with the main body working out of Dresden, and there's still arguments between Dresden and Berlin over whose job it is.
Frankie: and how would the telegraph feature in this?
Albrecht: that's what the telegraph is for. We establish lines between say...Vienna and Buda...Vienna and Milan...to facilitate the easier communication- its faster than a rider with a message. These telegraph lines- say one between Buda and Vienna - Vienna can warn in Hungary of a coming flood and Hungary can respond to it faster. Then once the flood happens, we can get decisions and orders backwards and forwards faster than we do at the moment.
Leopold: it'll be a hard sell to anyone if the line only functions one way-
Albrecht: but they won't. The people in Buda can send back information to report on things like drainage outside the embankments, and whether straightening the Rhine worked or...any of that.
Frankie: how does this solve the problem of the
current flood, Albrecht?
Albrecht: *sheepish* well...it doesn't., I guess-
Stephan: he has a point.
Others: he does?
Albrecht: I do?
Stephan: it's a vague, badly thought out point. But he's right that there's too many cooks spoiling the soup between start and finish. He's right that it takes too long to confirm decisions, and that people often change their mind or are relying on outdated information to make decisions. A telegraph network would improve that. A centralized body to "decide" on these type of things would "streamline" things.
Frankie: and who would be on this body?
Stephan: geologists, scientists, chemists, engineers...men who actually
know what's going on. Who can take the information collected and turn it into a useful decision. And this wouldn't just be for floods and their effects, it could be used for railways, mines, roads...et cetera.
Frankie: with final decision remaining with the emperor.
Stephan: of course. Or his representative.
Frankie: and until they come up with an idea to fix floods for once and for all, I suppose the final decision remains with the emperor and his representatives on how to "fix the damage" the floods cause.[7]
*fade to black*
[1] "a serious prophet on predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree. This would demonstrate that he was indeed a seer"
[2]
map of the extent of the water damage to Dresden in the ice flood of March-April 1845
[3] this was proposed in November 1845
[4] from the Pressburger Zeitung after the flood of 1830
[5] Johann Gottfried Tulla, responsible for straightening the upper Rhine. Tulla was a founder of the Karlsruhe Engineering School that later became Karlsruhe University
[6] there's an anecdote that, after Louis XV had banned the publication of the Encyclopedie, he went to a dinner with Madame de Pompadour. There, the talk turned to how they made gunpowder, but none of the guests - learned though they were - knew exactly what went into the making of gunpowder. La Pompadour used it as a vehicle to remark "oh, if only there were a book that we could consult to tell us what went into the making of gunpowder". Cue the Encyclopedie being unbanned. Frankie's remark to Albrecht is that "wishing there was a body doesn't mean there is a body available"
[7] the Imperial Academy of Sciences was established in 1847 to do exactly what Albrecht is suggesting, actually. And in 1851, Franz Joseph approved plans for the Imperial-Royal Central Institute for Meteorology and Earth Magnetism (ZAMG). These were both in response to the floods in 1847 and 1849, here, since Austria is "less diplomatically isolated" than OTL, the Ice Floods of March 31 1845 have provoked a "quicker" response. Heidelberg and Mainz are not in Austrian territory, but there were floods all down the Elbe and Rhine river as well as in Moravia at the time. Ergo, Frankie's not really "eager" to change for the sake of change, but this actually falls into his (minister of education), Stephan and Albrecht (both of whom OTL had interests in the sciences and geology) wheelhouses, plus the telegraph line was being proposed around this time OTL as well. And Stephan is mentioned (by his sister) as being interested in that too. The "falling over one another's feet" was actually a problem until 1868 (in Austria) and in the
Országgyűlés in the 1870s when Gyula Nary proposed Law XXXIX and established the
Gátépitési Társulatok. So Frankie "sort of agreeing" to this is anything from two to twenty years ahead of schedule (although, from what I can make out, there was no reason why someone couldn't have cottoned onto this idea twenty years ahead of schedule)
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