Church was accordingly mooted at the Lambeth Conference of 1908.
The idea was even mooted of damming up the river near Hauconcourt, and thus, flooding out the whole of the civil population of Metz; but expert civil engineers, who were sent for from Germany, reported against the proposal.
In the middle ages the question was often mooted whether states subject to feudal superiors, or the states forming the empire, were sovereign.
The first proposal for a free Rhine was mooted by the French at the congress of Rastatt (1797-1799), but Holland, commanding the mouth of the river, placed every obstacle in the way of the suggestion.
After the Danubian campaign of 1809 and the divorce of Josephine, Talleyrand used the influence which he still possessed in the imperial council on behalf of the choice of an Austrian consort for his master, for, like Metternich (who is said first to have mooted the proposal), he saw that this would safeguard the interests of the Habsburgs, whose influence he felt to be essential to the welfare of Europe.
