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, France
Allegiance	Kingdom of France Kingdom of France French Republic
Rank	General
Battles / wars	American Revolutionary War French Revolutionary Wars

Arthur Dillon (3 September 1750 – 13 April 1794) was a French Army officer and politician who served during the American Revolutionary War and the War of the First Coalition. After serving in several political officers during the early years of the French 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 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. He had six siblings, who are listed in his father's article.

Family tree

Arthur Dillon with his two wives, his parents, and other selected relatives.[a] Theobald 7th Viscount d. 1691 Jacobite Mary Talbot d. 1691 Henry 8th Viscount d. 1714 Arthur 1670–1733 French General Christina Sheldon 1684–1757 Richard 9th Viscount 1688–1737 Charles 10th Viscount 1701–1741 Henry 11th Viscount 1705–1787 Charlotte Lee d. 1794 Charles 12th Viscount 1745–1813 Therese Lucy de Rothe 1751–1782 Arthur Dillon 1750–1794 Laure de Girardin de Montgérald Henry Augustus 13th Viscount 1777–1832 Henriette -Lucy de la Tour du Pin 1770–1853 Legend XXX Subject of the article XXX Viscounts Dillon

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 first cousin once removed, Therese-Lucy de Rothe (1751–1782).

Arthur and Thérèse-Lucie had two children:

1. George (who died at the age of two)
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^[3] 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 Admiral John Byron 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. Dillon and his regiment participated in the Invasion of Tobago, the Capture of Sint Eustatius, and the Siege of Brimstone Hill. With the victory at Brimstone Hill, Arthur Dillon was made Military Governor of Saint Kitts. 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. The Dillon Estate in Martinique produced sugar and later produced Dillon Rum.

Later life, death, and timeline

Dillon's tombstone in Père-Lachaise, where he is buried with his daughter Fanny.

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.^[4] 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.^[5] 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).^[6]

Timeline
Age	Date	Event
0	1750, 3 Sep	Born at Bray Wick in Berkshire, England.[1]
16	1767, 25 Aug	Became colonel and owner of Dillon's regiment.
37	1787, 3 Nov	His father died.
43	1794, 13 April	Died under the guillotine.

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 and references

Notes

1. This family tree is partly derived from the Dillon family tree pictured in La Tour du Pin.^[2] Also see the lists of siblings and children in the text.

Citations

1. O'Callaghan 1854, p. 50, footnote. "... the latter [Arthur] at Braywick in Berkshire, in September, 1750."
2. La Tour du Pin 1913, pp. 14–15. "Note généalogique sur la Maison des Lords Dillon"
3. Jullien de Courcelles 1822, p. 291. "... contribua puissament à la capture de la Grenade ..."
4. Phipps 1926, p. 78, line 9. "... on the 29th April, his men broke and fled for Lille, which they re-entered in wild confusion, crying out 'Treason', wounding Dupont, and not only killing their general, Théobald Dillon, but venting their fury on his corpse ..."
5. Phipps 1926, p. 135. "This troop was now reinforced to 16000, a strength later increased from garrisons ..."
6. Phipps 1926, p. 137, line 27. "Arrested on the 1st July 1793, he was included amongst the victims of the alleged 'conspiration des prisons' and was guillotined on the 13 April 1794, shouting vigorously 'vive le roi', as he mounted the scaffold."

Sources

• Jullien de Courcelles, Jean Baptiste Pierre (1822). Dictionnaire historique et biographique des généraux français [Historic and Biographic Dictionary of French Generals] (in French). Vol. Tome cinquième. Paris: chez l'auteur. OCLC 1071691485. – Coss to Exc
• La Tour du Pin, Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de (1913). Journal d'une femme de cinquante ans [Diary of a Woman in her Fifties] (in French). Vol. I (7th ed.). Paris: Librairie Chapelot. OCLC 1047408815.
• O'Callaghan, John Cornelius (1854). History of the Irish Brigades in the Service of France. New York: P. O'Shea Publisher. OCLC 1046538374.
• Phipps, Ramsay Weston (1926). The Armies of the First French Republic and the Rise of the Marshals of Napoleon I. Vol. 1 The Armée du Nord. London: Oxford University Press. OCLC 277765127.

Further reading

• Brizan, Edward (1984). Grenada: Island of Conflict. London: Zed Books. OCLC 40397478.
• 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.