(1701–1741), who, on his uncle's death in 1733, inherited the title and estates, and died in London; Henry, who succeeded his brother in the colonelcy in 1733, and in the title in 1741, but resigned the former in 1744 on the passing of an act confiscating the possessions of British subjects in foreign service; James, a knight of Malta, colonel of Dillon's regiment in 1744 and killed at Fontenoy in 1745 (his banner is still preserved at Ditchley); Edward (1720–1747), who succeeded to the colonelcy, and was killed at Laufeld; and Arthur Richard [q. v.], archbishop of Narbonne.
[Ditchley MSS.; Chronologie Militaire, iv. 622; Mémoires de Saint-Simon; Observations sur les Officiers irlandais, par M. A. D. (Arthur Dillon), Député à l'Assemblée Nationale, a pamphlet published at Paris, c. 1790.]
DILLON, ARTHUR RICHARD (1750–1794), general in the French service, son of Henry, eleventh viscount, and nephew of Archbishop Dillon [q. v.], was born in 1750 at Braywick, Berkshire. Sub-lieutenant in Dillon's regiment, he was in 1767 appointed to the colonelcy, which Louis XV, reluctant to see it pass from the family, had kept vacant from 1747. He served in the West Indies during the American war, was governor of St. Kitt's during its brief occupancy by the French, visited London on the peace of 1783, and was complimented by the lord chancellor on his administration of that island. He became brigadier-general in 1784 with a pension of 1,000f., was three years governor of Tobago, was deputy for Martinique in the National Assembly, and was a frequent speaker on colonial questions. In June 1792 he received the command of the army of the north, offended the Jacobins by a general order reprobating the capture of the Tuileries, was supplanted by Dumouriez, under whom he distinguished himself in the Argonne passes, fell again under suspicion on account of a letter offering the landgrave of Hesse an unmolested retreat, was imprisoned for six weeks in 1792, and again for eight months in 1793–4. Condemned as a ringleader in the alleged Luxembourg prison plot, he was guillotined on 14 April with twenty others, including Lucile Desmoulins, with whom and her husband he had been on intimate terms. He was twice married, and left two daughters, one of whom, Fanny, married General Bertrand, and was with Napoleon at Elba and St. Helena.
[Moniteur and other Paris newspapers, 1789–94; Révolution française, March 1884; Observations sur les Officiers irlandais.]
DILLON, ARTHUR RICHARD (1721–1806), a French prelate, youngest son of General Arthur Dillon [q. v.], was born in 1721 at St. Germain. He was a priest at Elan, near Mézières, when on his brother Edward's death at Laufeld Louis XV said he should have the first vacant benefice. He accordingly became in 1747 vicar-general of Pontoise, and gaining rapid promotion was appointed in 1753 bishop of Evreux, in 1758 archbishop of Toulouse, and in 1763 archbishop of Narbonne and primate of the Gauls. This last post made him virtual viceroy of Languedoc, the province enjoying the largest measure of self-government, and he actively promoted roads, bridges, canals, harbours, and other improvements. President of the assembly of the clergy in 1788, he publicly applauded the legal recognition of protestant marriages. The revolution reduced his income from 350,000f. (insufficient for his style of living) to 30,000f. He migrated to Coblenz at the end of 1790, thence went to London, and refused to recognise the concordat by which his diocese was abolished. He was buried in St. Pancras churchyard, London.
[Audibert, le Dernier Président des Etats de Languedoc, 1868; Lavergne, Assemblées Provinciales sous Louis XVI; Tocqueville, Ancien Régime et la Révolution.]
DILLON, EDOUARD (1751–1839), a French general and diplomatist, was born in 1751 at Bordeaux, where his father, Robert Dillon, formerly a banker at Dublin, had settled. Known as ‘le beau Dillon,’ and one of the queen's chief favourites, he served in the West Indies and America, afterwards visited the Russian court, was colonel of the Provence regiment, and gentleman in waiting to the Comte d'Artois. On the revolution breaking out he quitted France, and in 1791, with his brothers, formed at Coblenz a new Dillon regiment. At the restoration he became lieutenant-general 1814, ambassador to Saxony 1816–18, and to Tuscany 1819. He married Fanny, daughter of Sir Robert Harland; she died in 1777. Three of his brothers, Theobald, Robert Guillaume, and Francis, were French officers; a fourth, Roger Henri (1762–1831), was a priest, a curator of the Mazarin Library, Paris, and author of some theological pamphlets; and a fifth, Arthur, likewise a priest, advocated in 1805 the introduction of foot pavements into Paris, but died about 1810, long before this improvement was adopted.
[Roche's Essays by an Octogenarian; Annuaire de la Noblesse, 1870; Nouvelle Biographie Générale.]
