Mülhausen

Mülhausen (Fr. Mulhouse), a town of Alsace-Lorraine, on the Ill and the Rhone and Rhine Canal, 68 miles by rail SSW. of Strasburg and 20 NW. of Basel. It consists of three parts, the old town, the new town, and the artisans' town, and is a place of first-rate industrial importance. The cotton manufacture employs 16,000 workpeople in the town and 60,000 in the adjacent villages. Besides this, it has printing and dye works for cotton, linen, calico, wool, and silk fabrics, chemical factories, iron and other metal works, and shops for making machinery, railway plant, &c. Pop. (1821) 13,027; (1861) 45,887; (1885) 69,759; (1890) 76,413. Mülhausen, which existed as early as 717, was made a free imperial city by Rudolf of Hapsburg in 1273. By siding with some of the Swiss cantons in the 14th century, it was enabled to maintain a certain degree of neutrality in the feuds between the empire and France. In 1515 it joined the Swiss Confederation, and in 1528 adopted the Reformed faith. But in 1798 it was incorporated with France, and began to come to the front as an industrial place after 1829. It is noted for the excellent arrangements made for the housing, &c. of the working-classes. It became a town of the German empire after the war of 1870-71. See Histories of the town by De Sablière (1856) and Metzger (Lyons, 1883).