Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dickson, Alexander (1777-1840)
DICKSON, Sir ALEXANDER (1777–1840), major-general, royal artillery, was third son of Admiral William Dickson of Sydenham House, Roxburghshire, by his first wife, the daughter of William Collingwood of Unthank, Northumberland, and brother of Admiral Sir Collingwood Dickson, second baronet (see Foster, Baronetage). He was born 3 June 1777, and entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, as a cadet 5 April 1793, passing out as second lieutenant royal artillery 6 Nov. 1794. His subsequent commissions in the British artillery were dated as follows: first lieutenant 6 March 1795, captain-lieutenant 14 Oct. 1801, captain 10 April 1805, major 26 June 1823, lieutenant-colonel 2 April 1825, colonel 1 July 1836. As a subaltern he served at the capture of Minorca in 1798, and at the blockade of Malta and siege of Valetta in 1800, where he was employed as acting engineer. As captain he commanded the artillery of the reinforcements sent out to South America under Sir Samuel Auchmuty [q. v.], which arrived in the Rio Plate 5 April 1807, and captured Monte Video, and was afterwards present at, but not engaged in, the disastrous attempt on Buenos Ayres. For a time he commanded the artillery of the army, in which he was succeeded by Augustus Frazer (Duncan, Hist. Roy. Art. ii. 170, 176, 178). When Colonel Howorth arrived in Portugal to assume command of the artillery of Sir Arthur Wellesley's army in April 1809, Dickson, who was in hopes of obtaining employment in a higher grade in the Portuguese artillery under Marshal Beresford [q. v.], accompanied him, and served as his brigade-major in the operations before Oporto and the subsequent expulsion of Soult's army from Portugal. Soon after he was appointed to a company in the Portuguese artillery in the room of Captain (afterwards Sir John) May, returning home. He subsequently became major and lieutenant-colonel in the Portuguese service, which gave him precedence over brother officers who were his seniors in the British artillery. In command of the Portuguese artillery he took part in the battle of Busaco in 1810, the affair of Campo Mayor, the siege and capture of Olivenza, and the battle of Albuera in 1811. His abilities were recognised by Lord Wellington, and the artillery details at the various sieges were chiefly entrusted to him (Gurwood, Well. Desp. v. 91). He superintended the artillery operations in the first and second sieges of Badajoz under the immediate orders of Lord Wellington in 1811; also at the siege and capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, the siege and capture of Badajoz, the attack and capture of the forts of Almaraz, the siege and capture of the forts of Salamanca, and the siege of Burgos, all in 1812. He commanded the reserve artillery at the battle of Salamanca and capture of Madrid in the same year. Dickson, a lieutenant-colonel in the Portuguese artillery, and brevet-major and first captain of a company of British artillery (No. 5 of the old 10th battalion R.A., which under its second captain, Cairns, did good service in the Peninsula, and was afterwards disbanded), became brevet lieutenant-colonel in the British service on 27 April 1812. Writing of him at the period of the advance into Spain in the spring of 1813, the historian of the royal artillery observes: ‘Whilst at Villa Ponte awaiting further advance his correspondence reveals more of the personal element than his letters, as a rule, allow to become visible. The alternate hoping and despairing as to orders to advance—the ennui produced by forced idleness—the impetuous way in which he would fling himself into professional discussions with General Macleod (deputy adjutant-general of artillery), merely to occupy his leisure—the spasmodic fits of zeal in improving the arrangements of his immense train, all unite to present to the reader a very vivid picture of him whose hand, so long still, penned these folded letters. His recurring attacks of fever, followed by apologies like the following: “The fact is when I am well I forget all, take violent exercise, and knock myself up; but I am determined to be more careful in future,” followed by the inevitable relapse—proof of the failure of his good intentions—combine 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. Dickson's third son by his first wife is the present General Sir Collingwood Dickson, V.C., K.C.B., royal artillery, late president of the ordnance select committee, an artillery officer who served with much distinction in the Crimea, and in India during the mutiny, and who, as before stated, is the holder of his father's professional memoranda, &c.
[Foster's Baronetage, under 'Dickson; 'Duncan's Hist. Roy. Artillery; Gurwood's Well. Desp. particularly vols. v. vi. and viii.; Kane's List of Officers Roy. Artillery (revised ed. 1869); Gent. Mag. 1831, 1840.]