Republic of Mulhouse

The Republic of Mulhouse, known in German as Stadtrepublik Mülhausen, was a small Protestant city-state in Alsace that became an associate of the Old Swiss Confederacy. Mulhouse had been a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire since 1275, and it became a republic in 1347 with the election of its first burgomaster, Hans von Dornach. It gained complete autonomy in 1395, which provoked the hostility of neighbouring nobles, and from 1354 to 1515 it belonged to the Décapole, the league of ten imperial cities in Alsace. In 1515 the city formally left the Empire and joined the Swiss Confederacy as an associate, so it was not annexed by France in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. As a Swiss enclave in Alsace it remained a free Calvinist republic, governed from the Hôtel de Ville. Its position ended during the French Revolutionary Wars: after a vote by the citizens on 4 January 1798, the Treaty of Mulhouse brought the city into France on 28 January 1798.