Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dillon, Edouard
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.]