Allier is a department in the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region of central France, with Moulins serivng as its capital. Named for the River Allier, the department was formerly part of the Bourbonnais province, and it was one of the original 83 departments created on 4 March 1790 during the French Revolution. In 1940, Philippe Petain's collaborationist government chose the Allier prefecture of Vichy to serve as its capital, lending its name to the regime of "Vichy France". The department was historically a communist stronghold due to the prevalence of sharecropping in the region, and Allier had a population of 335,975 people in 2019.
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