Though they co-operated in building the town walls in 1290, the canons and the dukes of Lorraine soon became rivals for the authority over Saint-Dié. The institution of a town council in 1628 which appropriated part of their temporal jurisdiction, in addition to numerous French occupations, diminished the financial influence of the canons. During the Stanislas reign and after the Lorraine annexation in 1776, the establishment in 1777 of a bishopric condemned the venerable institution, with the first bishop Monseigneur de Chaumont. With the French Revolution all the religious people were completely swept away.