Theobald Dillon

Theobald Dillon (* 1745 in Dublin , † April 29, 1792 in Lille ), also called Théobald de Dillon , was Count of Dillon and a French military leader during the coalition wars . After a failed attempt to take the Belgian city of Tournai , he was murdered by his own soldiers.

family

Theobald was the son of Thomas Dillons and his wife Marie Hussey of Donore and thus a member of an old Irish aristocratic family that had held the French nobility title of the Counts of Dillon since 1711. His parents moved from Dublin to Orléans the same year he was born . Arthur Richard Dillon , Archbishop of Toulouse , was his uncle while the French general Arthur Dillon was his brother.

He lived with his lover Joséphine Vierville for nine years until his death. In his will of April 28, 1792, Theobald claims that he wanted to marry Joséphine, which would not have been realized due to lack of time. The couple had four children together, including their son Auguste, who like his father embarked on a military career and became an officer in the Irish Legion .

Life

From 1762 he was a cadet in the Régiment de Dillon , which his great-grandfather had set up and was therefore named after his family. In 1778 he was promoted to captain of the Dillon Infantry . In this rank he took part in the American War of Independence before he was appointed Colonel of this regiment on his return to France on April 13, 1780. In the same year he was promoted to Brigadier des armées du roi . On June 13, 1783, he was promoted to the Maréchal de camp .

During the French Revolution , his regiment - like all foreign military units - was incorporated into the French army and renamed "87 ^e regment d'infanterie" on January 1, 1791 . Dillon then officially held the rank of commanding general of a cavalry unit. In 1792 his unit was assigned to the Northern Army on the Flemish border under the leadership of Rochambeau .

After France had declared war on Austria, Charles-François Dumouriez gave him the order at the end of April 1792 to take Tournai with his soldiers, while avoiding combat operations and direct confrontations with the enemy. Halfway there, Theobald Dillon was faced with a superior force of Austrian armed forces between Lamain and Marquain on April 29 , so that he ordered the withdrawal of his troops in accordance with his order so as not to allow an open battle. Carried by a subliminal attitude of insubordination and insubordination within the troops and because the Austrians took them under artillery fire, Dillon's men believed that their leader had betrayed them. Together with other senior officers, he was murdered by his own soldiers and his body was then publicly cremated in Lille on the market square.

Theobald's brother Arthur brought the case, which was unique for its time, before the National Convention , which sentenced the murderers to death.

literature

• Jacques Godechot: La révolution française: chronologie commentée 1787–1799; suivie de notices biographiques sur le personnage cités . Perrin, Paris 1988, ISBN 2-262-00508-7 .
• Richard Hayes: Biographical Dictionary of Irishmen in France . Gill, Dublin 1949, p. 277-279 .
• Jean Chrétien Ferdinand Hoefer : Nouvelle biography générale depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à nos jours . tape 14 . Firmin Didot, Paris 1854, Sp. 181-182 .
• Andrew O'Reilly: Reminiscences of an Emigrant Milesian: The Irish Abroad and at Home; in the camp; at the court . tape 2 . Richard Bentley, London 1853, p. 70-79 ( online ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ R. Hayes: Biographical Dictionary of Irishmen in France . S. 277 .
2. ^ Dillon  1). In: Heinrich August Pierer , Julius Löbe (Hrsg.): Universal Lexicon of the Present and the Past . 4th edition. tape 5 . Altenburg 1858, p. 155 ( zeno.org ).
3. ↑ Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Jullien de Courcelles : Dictionnaire historique et biographique des généraux français, depuis le onzième siècle jusqu'en 1822 . tape  5 . Paris 1822, p. 291 ( online ).