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Alsace and Lorraine were both part of the Holy Roman Empire from the Middle Ages, but over time they became more and more frenchified in culture, and Lorraine became French in language as well. Between 1648 and 1681 France acquired Alsace piecemeal by a combination of treaty and conquest, and the border of the Empire was redrawn around it while the westernmore Lorraine remained in the Empire under its French-speaking dukes of the House of Lorraine (the family of Charlemagne). In 1729 Francis III of Lorraine was betrothed to Maria Theresa, the heiress of Austria and its vast array of territories in eastern Europe and elsewhere. To prevent Lorraine from falling into Austria's camp. Louis XV of France negotiated a deal which gave to Francis the grand duchy of Tuscany, which was conveniently vacant at the time with the dying out of the Medici family (from which the French King was descended). In exchange, Lorraine was given to Stanislaus Leszczynski. A deposed king of Poland, he was the father-in-law of Louis XV, and the plan was for the French kings to inherit Lorraine, as they did.
So Alsace was part of France from 1681and Lorraine essentially so after 1729. Despite the tumultuous history of France from 1789 through to the middle of the nineteenth century, Alsace and Lorraine remained part of France until 1870, when eveything changed. In what began as a dispute over who should replace the deposed Queen Isabella II of Spain, Prussia and several allied German states invaded France and quickly conquered and totally subdued Alsace and Lorraine. This overwhelming victory of Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War allowed the King of Prussia to become German Emperor and brought about the fall of Napoleon III and of the Second Empire in France (1870). Alsace-Lorraine was not incorporated into Prussia but became an imperial territory ruled by the German states jointly. It remained so until the German loss in World War II, when the territories werw returned to France (1919).
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