The area around Rheinfelden was already settled in the
Middle Stone Age, around 10,000 years
before the present day. At that time, people lived in the "Hermitage", a small natural cave next to the current highway. In the year 45 BC, a few kilometres further west, the settlement
Augusta Raurica was founded, the first
Roman town in Switzerland, near modern Kaiseraugst. In the plains at Rheinfelden was then a large
estate. Towards the end of the 4th century a border fort was constructed at the western settlement. Rheinfelden is first mentioned about 851 as
Rifelt and in the first half of the 12th century it was called
Rinfelden. In the second half of the 10th century, the entire
Fricktal area—the Frick valley, a finger of land in northwestern
Switzerland east of present-day
Basel, between the
Jura Mountains to the south, and the
High Rhine border with present-day Germany to the north—was within
Kingdom of Burgundy. At that time, Rheinfelden was granted to the von Wetterau family. They later adopted the title of Count of Rheinfelden. The Rheinfeldens built a fortress, "Stein", on the strategically located island; a riverbank settlement stood at the "Altenburg". The last of this
comital line was
Rudolf of Rheinfelden,
Duke of Swabia (1057–79) and German
antiking (1077–80) during the
Investiture Controversy. When Rudolf died on 15 October 1080 in
Merseburg, his territories were inherited by
Berthold II of Zähringen.but the town went to his son Otto and his family the von Wetter's. Berhold's second son,
Conrad, awarded
market rights to the city, making it the oldest
Zähringerstadt in Switzerland and the oldest city in the Aargau; in 1150 he also had the first bridge built across the Rhine, between
Konstanz and
Strasbourg. In 1218,
Berthold V died without issue. In 1225, Rheinfelden gained
Reichsfreiheit to become an
Imperial City. A little over a century later, in 1330, the city pledged itself to the
Habsburgs, becoming a part of
Further Austria. In 1445, when the Habsburgs were fighting the
Old Zürich War, insurgents destroyed the castle on the "Inseli", due to the city's allegiance with Basel. After a siege lasting several months, Rheinfelden was returned to Austrian subjugation in 1449. After the
Waldshut War from 1468, all of Fricktal Burgundy pledged to the Habsburgs. After the Burgundians were beaten by the
Old Swiss Confederacy in the
Burgundian Wars, Rheinfelden land, not Title, was restored to Austria in 1477. During the 17th century, there was very little time during which the city enjoyed peace. During the
Rappenkrieg, a peasant uprising that lasted from 1612 until 1614, the city was unsuccessfully besieged but devastated. Between 1633 and 1638 the
Thirty Years' War reached Fricktal, where Rheinfelden played an important role. On 15 July 1633,
Swedish and
French troops devastated the city. On 5 February 1638, the city was besieged by
Protestant troops under the command of
Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. On 28 February the
Battle of Rheinfelden began, as the city was attacked by numerically superior
Imperial and
Bavarian troops under the command of
Johann von Werth and
Federico Savelli. The Protestants lost this encounter and withdrew. Bernhard brought them weapons, but in the second action, on 3 March, they were victorious, as he and his men unexpectedly re-appeared on the battlefield; both Savelli and Werth were captured. By the end of the Thirty Years' War, the Austrians had built a fortress on the island to secure the southwestern border of the
Breisgau. In 1678, French troops under the command of
François de Créquy fired at the city. In 1745, during the
War of the Austrian Succession, the French made a fortress on the same ground and also blasted a portion of the city wall. On 17 July 1796 Rheinfelden was again occupied and looted by the
French. As a result of the
Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797, the Fricktal became a
French protectorate, forming the
front line between the
French Revolutionary and the
Austrian troops in the
War of the Second Coalition. On 20 February 1802 Rheinfelden was made a district capital of the newly created
Canton of Fricktal, (Principality of Frickgau), joining the
Helvetic Republic in August, the point at which the city became decisively Swiss. After the removal of the governor
Sebastian Fahrländer at the end of September 1802, the seat of the cantonal government was relocated here from
Laufenburg. With the beginning of the
Reichsdeputationshauptschluss (the
German Mediatisation), Napoleon Bonaparte dissolved the canton of Fricktal. Since 19 March 1803, Rheinfelden has been the capital of a district of the same name, in the
canton of Aargau. With the
Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, the remaining (German) parts of the city lost their independence to the
Grand Duchy of Baden, becoming
Rheinfelden, Germany. ==Mayors==