Franz Egon of Fürstenberg

Franz Egon of Fürstenberg (1625 - April 1, 1682), bishop of Strassburg, was the elder son of Egon VII, count of Fürstenberg (1588-1635), 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 Strassburg. 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 May 11, 1674, Franz was deprived of all his preferments in Germany, and was compelled to take refuge in France. He was, however, amnestied with his brother William by a special article of the Treaty of Nijmegen (1679), whereupon he returned to Cologne. After the French occupation of Strassburg (1681) he took up his residence there and died on 1 April 1682.

References

*1911