Arthur Dillon (1750–1794)

Arthur Dillon
Painting by Jean-Hilaire Belloc, 1834
Born	3 September 1750 Braywick, Berkshire, England
Died	13 April 1794(1794-04-13) (aged 43) Paris, French First Republic
Allegiance	Kingdom of France
Rank	General
Battles/wars	American Revolutionary War French Revolutionary Wars War of the First Coalition

Arthur Dillon (1750–1794) was an Irish Catholic aristocrat born in England who inherited the ownership of a regiment that served France under the Ancien Régime during the American Revolutionary War and then the French First Republic during the War of the First Coalition. After serving in political positions during the early years of the revolution, he was executed in Paris as a royalist during the Reign of Terror in 1794.

Birth and origins[]

Arthur was born on 3 September 1750 at Bray Wick in Berkshire, England.^[1] He was the third child and second son of Henry Dillon and his wife Charlotte Lee. His father was the 11th Viscount Dillon. Arthur's mother was a daughter of George Lee, 2nd Earl of Lichfield.

Arthur appears below among his siblings as the third child:

1. Charles (1745–1813), became the 12th Viscount Dillon;^[2]
2. Frances (1747–1825), married Sir William Jerningham, 6th Baronet Jerningham;^[3][4]
3. Arthur (1750–1794);
4. Catherine (1752–1797);^[5]
5. Laura (born 1754);^[6]
6. Charlotte (1755–1782), married Valentine, 1st Earl of Kenmare (1754–1812);^[7] and
7. Henry (1759–1837), became the last colonel of Dillon's Regiment and married Frances Trant.^[8]

Colonel[]

On 25 August 1767, at the age of 16, he became colonel of Dillon's Regiment taking over from his father who had been absentee colonel for twenty years from 1747 to 1767 after the death of his uncle Edward at Lauffeld in 1747.

First marriage and children[]

At eighteen, Colonel Dillon married a second cousin, Therese-Lucy de Rothe (1751–1782).

Arthur and Thérèse-Lucie had two children:

1. George (who died at the age o two) and
2. Henriette-Lucy, or Lucie (by marriage, Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de La Tour du Pin Gouvernet), a memoiriste of the Revolutionary period and the Napoleonic era.

He was to become the grandfather of Arthur Dillon, also a military officer.

American Revolutionary War[]

In 1778 France entered the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) on the American side. Colonel Dillon sailed with his regiment to the Caribbean to campaign against Britain under the command of D'Estaing. In 1779 he and his regiment fought at the Capture of Grenada^[10] against British forces under George Macartney. They landed on 2 July, and stormed the Hospital Hill which the British had chosen as the centre of their resistance. Arthur personally led one of the storm parties, his brother Henry led another. Macartney surrendered on 5 July. On 6 July 1779 a British fleet under appeared off the coast of the island and the naval engagement of the Battle of Grenada was fought. In September and October 1779 Dillon fought at the Siege of Savannah where he was promoted brigadier. After the Treaty of Paris, he became governor of Tobago.

Second marriage[]

His first wife having died, he married a wealthy French Creole widow from Martinique, Laure de Girardin de Montgérald, the Comtesse de la Touche, by whom he had six children, including Élisabeth Françoise 'Fanny' Dillon, later wife of Henri Gatien Bertrand.

Later life, death, and timeline[]

He returned to Paris to represent Martinique in the Estates General of 1789 as a democratic, reformist royalist.^{[citation needed]}

Dillon assumed military duties at a very difficult time for noble officers of the old army. On 29 April 1792 his cousin Théobald Dillon was lynched by his own troops after a minor skirmish.^[11] After the Battle of Valmy, when Charles Dumouriez returned to the Belgian frontier with the greater part of the army, he detached Dillon with 16,000 troops to form the rump of the Army of the Ardennes around 1 October 1792.^[12] Two weeks later Dillon was called to Paris for questioning and was ultimately arrested on 1 July 1793 despite being stoutly defended by his aide-de-camp François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers. He was condemned for alleged participation in a prison conspiracy and executed by guillotine on 13 April 1794. In his final moments he mounted the scaffold shouting, "Vive le roi!" (Long live the king).^[13]

Works[]

• Compte-rendu au ministre de la guerre (Paris, 1792) ;
• Exposition des principaux événements qui ont eu le plus d'influence sur la révolution française (Paris, 1792).

See also[]

• Distillerie Dillon

Notes, citations, and sources[]

Notes[]

Citations[]

Sources[]

• Betham, Rev. William (1801). The Baronetage of England: Or The History of the English Baronets, and Such Baronets of Scotland, as are of English Families; with Genealogical Tables, and Engravings of Their Coats of Arms. 1. London: William Miller. (for Jerningham)
• Brizan, Edward (1984). Grenada: Island of Conflict. London: Zed Books.
• Burke, Bernard (1949). A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire (99th ed.). London: Burke's Peerage Ltd.
• Debrett, John (1828a). Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 1 (17th ed.). London: F. C. and J. Rivington. - England (for Jerningham)
• Debrett, John (1828b). Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 2 (17th ed.). London: F. C. and J. Rivington. - Scotland and Ireland (for Dillon & Kenmare)
• Jullien de Courcelles, Jean Baptiste Pierre (1822). Dictionnaire historique et biographique des généraux français (in French). 5. Paris: chez l'auteur. – Coss to Exc
• La Tour du Pin, Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de (1913). Journal d'une femme de cinquante ans (in French). 1 (7th ed.). Paris: Librairie Chapelot.
• O'Callaghan, John (1854). History of the Irish Brigade in the service of France. New York: P. O'Shea Publisher.
• Phipps, Ramsay Weston (1926). The Armies of the First French Republic and the Rise of the Marshals of Napoleon I. 1 The Armée du Nord. London: Oxford University Press.
•  Bouillet, Marie-Nicolas; Chassang, Alexis, eds. (1878). Dictionnaire Bouillet (in French). Missing or empty |title= (help)
• Larousse, Pierre (1863–1890). Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle. 15 volumes
• Biographie moderne, Paris Eymery Éditeur (1815);

Further reading[]

• Moorehead, Caroline (2009). Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, Eyewitness to an Era. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 978-0-70117904-5.