to put before the reader a very lovable picture of a very earnest man’ (ib. ii. 311). In May 1813 the Marquis of Wellington, whose relations with the commanding officers of royal artillery in Spain for some time past had been very unsatisfactory, invited Dickson to take command of the allied artillery, his brevet rank giving him the requisite seniority (Gurwood, Well. Desp. vi. 472). Dickson, still a captain of artillery, thus succeeded to what properly was a lieutenant-general's command, having eight thousand men and between three thousand and four thousand horses under him (Evidence of Sir H. Hardinge before Select Committee on Public Expenditure, 1828, p. 44). He commanded the allied artillery at Vittoria, and by virtue of his brevet rank was senior to Augustus Frazer, under whom he had served in South America, at the siege of St. Sebastian. Frazer in one of his letters alludes to the ‘manly simplicity’ of character of Dickson, to whom he refers in generous and chivalrous terms. Dickson commanded the allied artillery at the passage of the Bidassoa, in the battles on the Nivelle and Nive, at the passage of the Adour, and the battle of Toulouse. After the war the officers of the field train department who had served under him presented him with a splendid piece of plate, and the officers of the royal artillery who served under him in the campaigns of 1813–14 presented him with a sword of honour.
Dickson commanded the artillery in the unfortunate expedition to New Orleans and at the capture of Fort Bowyer, Mobile. He returned from America in time to take part in the Waterloo campaign. At this time he was first captain of G (afterwards F) troop of the royal horse artillery, of whose doings its second captain, afterwards the late General Cavallier Mercer, has left so graphic an account (see Cavaillier Mercer, Waterloo). Dickson was present at Quatre Bras and Waterloo, in personal attendance on Sir George Wood, commanding the artillery (Duncan, ii. 435). He subsequently commanded the battering-train sent in aid of the Prussian army at the sieges of Maubeuge, Landrecies, Philipville, Marienburg, and Rocroy, in July–August 1815, but which the Duke of Wellington, disapproving of the acts of Prince Augustus of Prussia, directed later to withdraw to Mons (see Gurwood, viii. 198, 208, 227, 256). In all his campaigns Dickson was never once wounded.
In 1822 Dickson was appointed inspector of artillery, and succeeded Lieutenant-general Sir John Macleod as deputy adjutant-general royal artillery on the removal of the latter to the office of director-general in 1827. On William Millar's death in 1838 Dickson succeeded him in the office of director-general of the field train department, with which he combined that of deputy adjutant-general of royal artillery to his death; during which period artillery progress was stifled by parliamentary retrenchment. He became a major-general 10 Jan. 1837. In 1838 Dickson, who received the K.C.H. (1817) and K.C.B. (1825), was made G.C.B., being the only officer of royal artillery then holding the grand cross of the military division of the order. He was royal aide-de-camp (1825–1837) and commissioner of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was one of the original fellows of the Royal Geographical Society and a fellow of other learned societies. He died at his residence, Charles Street, Berkeley Square, 22 April 1840, at the age of sixty-two, and was buried in Plumstead old churchyard. In 1847 a monument was erected to his memory by regimental subscription in the grounds of the Royal Military Repository, Woolwich.
Dickson was not only a great artilleryman but also a most industrious and methodical collector and registrar of details which came under his notice. During the various sieges in the Peninsula which were conducted by him he kept diaries, mentioning even the most trifling facts, and on his return to England he procured from General Macleod the whole of the long series of letters he had written to him between 1811 and 1814. This mass of memoranda became the property of his son, General Sir Collingwood Dickson, V.C., who lent it to Colonel Duncan when that officer was preparing his ‘History of the Royal Artillery,’ and it forms the basis of the narrative there given of the later Peninsula campaigns, the great intrinsic value of the memoranda being enhanced by the fact that many of the letter-books of the deputy adjutant-general's department for the period are or were missing (DUNCAN, vol. ii.). Several portraits of Dickson are extant, among which may be mentioned the figure (in spectacles) in Hayter's ‘Waterloo Guests,’ and a very spirited half-length photograph forming the frontispiece to the second volume of Colonel Duncan's ‘History of the Royal Artillery.’
Dickson married, first, on 19 Sept. 1802, Eulalia, daughter of Don Stefano Brionès of Minorca, and by her (who died 24 July 1830) had a numerous family of sons and daughters; secondly, on 18 Dec. 1830, Mrs. Meadows, relict of Eustace Meadows of Conholt Park, Hampshire, who survived him and remarried Major-general Sir John Campbell [q. v.], Portuguese service.
