Franz Egon of Fürstenberg

Who was Franz Egon of Fürstenberg?

Franz Egon of Fürstenberg, bishop of Strasbourg, was the elder son of Egon VIII of Fürstenberg-Heiligenberg, who served with distinction as a Bavarian general in the Thirty Years' War.

He began life as a soldier in the imperial service, but on the elevation of his friend Maximilian Henry of Bavaria to the electorate of Cologne in 1650, he went to his court and embraced the ecclesiastical career. He soon gained a complete ascendancy over the weak-minded elector, and, with his brother William Egon, was mainly instrumental in making him the tool of the aggressive policy of Louis XIV of France.

Ecclesiastical preferments were heaped upon him. As a child he had been appointed to a canonry of Cologne; to these he added others at Strassburg, Liège, Hildesheim and Speyer; he became also suffragan bishop and dean of Cologne and provost of Hildesheim, and in 1663 bishop of Strasbourg. Later he was also prince-abbot of Luders and Murbach and abbot of Stablo and Malmedy.

On the conclusion of a treaty between the emperor and the elector of Cologne, on 11 May 1674, Franz was deprived of all his preferments in Germany, and was compelled to take refuge in France.