Descended from an old family of the Electorate of the Palatinate, he was born at Heidelberg, the son of Count Hans Meinhard von Schönberg (1582–1616) and Anne, a daughter of Edward Sutton, 5th Baron Dudley, and Theodosia Harington.

[1] After the peace of the Pyrenees (1659), the independence of Portugal was threatened by Spain, and Schomberg was sent as military adviser to Lisbon with the secret approval of Charles II of England.

[1] After participating with his army in the revolution which deposed the reigning king Afonso VI of Portugal in favour of his brother Dom Pedro, and ending the war with Spain, Schomberg returned to France, became a naturalised Frenchman and bought the lordship of Coubert near Paris.

In 1673 he was brought by Charles II to England to take command of the newly formed Blackheath Army, which was planned to take part in an invasion of the Dutch Republic during the Third Anglo-Dutch War.

The following year he was made a Knight of the Garter,[4] was appointed Master-General of the Ordnance, was created Duke of Schomberg,[5] and received from the House of Commons a vote of £100,000 to compensate him for the loss of his French estates, of which Louis had deprived him.

[1] His conduct was criticized in ill-informed quarters, but the facts justified his inactivity, and he gave what was said at the time to be a "striking example of his generous spirit" in placing at William of Orange's disposal for military purposes the £100,000 recently granted to him.

After riding through the river to rally his men, he was wounded twice in the head by sabre cuts, and was shot in the neck by Cahir O'Toole of Ballyhubbock and instantly killed.

[8] His eldest son Charles Schomberg, the second duke in the English peerage, died in the year 1693 of wounds received at the Battle of Marsaglia.

On the monument is a Latin inscription by Jonathan Swift,[1] which reads: Hic infra situm est corpus Frederici Ducis de Schonberg, ad Bubindam occisi, A.D. 1690.

Sed postquam per epistolas, per amicos, diu ac saepe orando nil profecere; hunc demum lapidem statuerunt; saltem ut scias, hospes, ubinam terrarum SCHONBERGENSIS cineres delitescunt.