Municipality of Rhineland
The Municipality of Rhineland is a rural municipality (RM) in the Canadian province of Manitoba that incorporated on January 1, 2015 via the amalgamation of the Rural Municipality of Rhineland and the towns of Gretna and Plum Coulee. It was formed as a requirement of "The Municipal Amalgamations Act", which required municipalities with a population less than 1,000 to amalgamate with one or more neighbouring municipalities by 2015. The Government of Manitoba initiated the amalgamations for municipalities to meet the 1997 minimum population requirement of 1,000 to incorporate a municipality.
Rhine Campaign of 1795
The Rhine formed the boundary between the German states of the Holy Roman Empire and its neighbors, principally France, but also Switzerland and the Netherlands. Any attack by either party required control of the crossings. At Basel, where the river makes a wide, northerly turn at the Rhine knee, it enters what the locals colloquially call "the Rhine Ditch" ("Rheingraben"). This forms part of a rift valley some wide bordered by the mountainous Black Forest on the east (German side) and the Vosges mountains on the west (French side). At the far edges of the eastern flood plain, tributaries cut deep defiles into the western slope of the mountains. Further to the north, the river became deeper and faster, until it widened into a delta where it emptied into the North Sea.