Rhine Alemannic

The Rhine Alemannic people speak Low Alemannic dialects of Upper German along the Upper Rhine plain, from Alsace across the river to the Baden Ortenau. Their forebears were the Alemanni who overran the Roman Agri Decumates by 260 and were defeated by the Franks under Clovis in 496. Their customary law was codified in the Lex Alamannorum around 720.

In the high Middle Ages Strasbourg and Colmar flourished as free imperial cities on the Rhine trade route, while Mulhouse tied itself to the Swiss Confederacy from 1466. The Reformation won many Alsatian towns, whose Protestants kept their worship even after the Edict of Fontainebleau of 1685 abolished privileges elsewhere in France.

Southern Alsace passed to France at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the remainder including Strasbourg later in the century, and Mulhouse in 1798. Alemannic remained the everyday speech under French rule.