Romansh

The Romansh are the Romance people of the valleys of Raetia, in and around Grisons, including chief town Chur. Their speech once reached Vorarlberg and southern Tyrol before Alemannic and Bavarian dialects pushed it back. Rome organised Raetia as a province in 15 BC, and by the fifth century Vulgar Latin had displaced Raetic and Celtic, forming Romansh.

Local communes formed the League of God's House in 1367, the Grey League in 1395 and the League of the Ten Jurisdictions in 1436. These united as the Three Leagues in 1471, allied with the Swiss Confederacy and helped defeat the Habsburgs at Calven in 1499.

The leagues became a free state under the federal charter of 1524. The Reformation and the Bündner Wirren of 1618 to 1639 split the valleys between Catholic and Protestant communities, each preserving its own Romansh dialect.