Dumouriez and Rochambeau in Flanders, the count was brutally and basely butchered by his own men under the following painful circumstances. On the 28th of April, 1792, he received instructions to advance towards the Austrian position at Tournay at the head of his army, but to avoid engaging in battle. Having discovered a large body of the enemy on the hills of Marquain next morning, he commanded a retreat; but the French soldiery, filled with insubordination and distrust of their superior officers, exclaimed—"We are betrayed—aristocrats to the lamp-post!" and ran in great disorder towards Lille. The count endeavoured to rally his men, but insulting jibes and a pistol shot were the only responses. The latter broke his thigh, and he was removed in a cabriolet to Lille. This had no sooner entered the town than a hundred bayonets were driven at the suffering frame of Count Dillon. "He was taken from the carriage," writes an eye-witness, "and thrown into the street, when they trampled upon his body and ran a thousand bayonets through it; a great fire was lighted in the market-place in which his body was thrown. French soldiers danced round the burning body of their general." The national assembly reprobated the act, and punished the perpetrators. Le beau Dillon was the last colonel of the regiment which bore his name. For one hundred and two years it had been commanded by members of this distinguished family. No wonder for Voltaire, in his Siécle de Louis XIV., to eulogize it as "un nom celébre dans les troupes Irlandaises."—W. J. F.
Arthur Dillon, second son of Lord Henry Dillon, was born in Ireland in 1750, and at the age of seventeen entered upon the colonel-proprietorship of the regiment of Dillon. He distinguished himself against the English during the war for the independence of the United States, and powerfully contributed to the conquest of Grenada, St. Eustacia, Tobago, and St. Christopher. Of the latter island he was appointed governor, and proved himself so well qualified for the post, that, upon the restoration of the island to the British in 1783, they confirmed the regulations he had made there. On visiting the court of St. James' subsequently he was officially complimented on his administrative and military ability. In 1780 Dillon was created brigadier, and in 1784 marechal-de-camp. When France was invaded by the forces of Austria and Prussia in 1792 he acted as general of division, successfully opposed the invaders on the plains of Champagne, and among the ambuscades of Argone forest; and, pursuing the retreating column to Verdun, retook that stronghold, which he triumphantly entered at the head of his troops. Soon after this event he attended a national meeting in Paris, at which Lord Edward Fitzgerald was also present, and declared his willingness, when called on, to perform a similar service to his own country. The French reign of anarchy and terror speedily hurried to a crisis. By an order of the sanguinary junto many men to whom France owed an eternal debt of gratitude were dragged to the guillotine; and Arthur Dillon was among the number. Some female victims were likewise sentenced to share his fate, and it is related that one, on mounting the scaffold, shuddered, and turning to Dillon said—"Ah monsieur, will you go first?" to which the general replied, smiling—"Anything to oblige a lady." His last words were "Vive le Roi." Pronounced in as loud a tone as if he were giving the word of command to his regiment, the exclamation resounded from the scaffold through the Place de la Revolution. This murderous execution took place on the 14th April, 1794. General Dillon's daughter became the wife of General Bertrand, who accompanied Napoleon to St. Helena.—W. J. F.
DILLON, Peter, a recent voyager, born about 1785, has connected his name with the fate of the unfortunate La Perouse (q. v.). Captain of a merchantman which was on its way from Valparaiso to New Zealand and Bengal, he touched in the May of 1826 at the Tucopia (or Barwell) island, one of the Santa Cruz or Queen Charlotte's group. Thirteen years before, when mate in a vessel bound from Bengal to New South Wales, he had aided the landing at Tucopia of a German and a Lascar, who had been rescued by him from one of the Feejee islands. On his visit of 1826 he found them still at Tucopia; and from articles in their possession, and other circumstances, he was led to suspect that La Perouse had been wrecked on a neighbouring island, variously called Vanikoro, Mannicolo, Pitt, and Recherche island. Prosecuting his inquiries in the following year on the island itself—under the auspices of the Indian government, which placed a vessel at his disposal—he succeeded in obtaining from the natives in the summer of 1827, not only traditions of the wreck of two vessels at Vanikoro, but a number of articles which had evidently belonged to a French government ship. When he reached Paris early in 1828, some of them were pronounced by a survivor of the expedition to have been on board the ships composing it, and one of them was identified, by its armorial bearings, as the property of Colignon the naturalist, who had accompanied it. Captain Dillon had an interview with Charles X., who made him a chevalier of the legion of honour, and gave him an annual pension of four thousand francs, on which the recipient seems to have vegetated in private life until his death in the February of 1847. Dillon published in 1829, in two rather diffuse volumes, an account of his "Voyages in the South Seas, &c., to ascertain the actual fate of La Perouse's expedition," and they had, naturally, the honour of being translated into French.—F. E.
DILLON, Wentworth. See Roscommon.
DILLWYN, Lewis Weston, distinguished for his knowledge of natural history. He was born on the 21st of August, 1778, and was the son of William Dillwyn of Higham Lodge, Walthamston, Essex. He resided at Burrough's Lodge and Sketty Hall in the county of Glamorganshire, and contributed many papers to the natural history of the neighbourhood of Swansea. In the early part of his life he wrote, in conjunction with the late Mr. Dawson Turner, "The Botanist's Guide through England and Wales." One of his last publications, which was produced on the occasion of the British Association for the Advancement of Science assembling at Swansea in 1848, was "Materials for a Fauna and Flora of Swansea and the neighbourhood." Mr. Dillwyn was a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant for the county of Glamorganshire. He was returned member of parliament for the same county in 1832. He was a fellow of the Royal, Linnæan, and many other scientific societies, and took an active interest in the progress of science till his death, which occurred at Sketty Hall, August 31, 1855.—E. L.
DIMITRIEF or DMITRIEV, Ivan Ivavovitch, a Russian poet, was born in the government of Simbirsk in 1760, where and at Casan he was educated till his twelfth year. When the rebellion of Pougatschef disturbed the district, he went with his father to the capital, where he was placed in the école des gardes of Semenof. After seeing some service, and attaining to the rank of colonel under Paul, he left the army, and eventually became state councillor under Alexander, who gave him a pension and the order of St. Vladimir. He died at Moscow, 15th October, 1837. Everything that this illustrious Russian poet has written is excellent. His very admirable Sclavonic translation of La Fontaine's fables is worthy of a high place in Sarmatian literature. His chansons are in a great variety of Sclavonic styles, from the cautious and yet fervent appeals that he made to the emperors, Paul and Alexander, down to the gallant strophes he wrote to court ladies, and the overflowings of his heart to the Sclavonic race. Besides, they are written in remarkably idiomatic Russian, and are rendered interesting from the circumstance, that in each fugitive piece in the celebrated "Jermak," for example, there is a strict observance of such conventional forms as were required by the relative social positions of the poet and his admirers. The names of Dimitrief and Karamsine go together, and their united exertions have not failed to be eminently beneficial to the Russian tongue and its history. Every succeeding memoir in the Moskovitiana, a Russian periodical, produced an increasing weight of facts and philological illustrations. The most profound philosophy could not unite in vain with the greatest popularity of the time. The best editions of Dimitrief's works are the first, Moscow, 1795; and the sixth, St. Petersburg, 1823.—(Dimitrief's Memoirs, published in the Moskovitiana.)—Ch. T.
DIMSDALE, Thomas, Baron, an eminent physician, was born at Thoydon Garden in Essex in 1712. He belonged to a family of Quakers, his grandfather having been the companion of William Penn in America. Thomas received the rudiments of his medical knowledge from his father, who was a surgeon and apothecary. He afterwards studied at St. Thomas' hospital, and commenced practice at Hertford about 1734. In 1745, shortly after the death of his first wife, he joined the medical staff of the duke of Cumberland's army, then on its way to suppress the Scottish rebellion. In this situation he remained till the surrender of Carlisle, when he returned to Hertford and married a second wife, whose fortune enabled him to retire from practice. His family, however, becoming numerous, he resumed it in 1761.
