William Dyott
English army officer
General William Dyott (17 April 1761 – 7 May 1847) was a British Army officer and courtier who served in the American War of Independence and French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Having joined the 4th Regiment of Foot in 1781, he initially served in Ireland before moving to Nova Scotia where in 1788 he befriended Prince William Henry, the future William IV. Dyott undertook a series of staff appointments in England and Ireland until after the start of the French Revolutionary Wars when, promoted to lieutenant colonel, he took the 25th Regiment of Foot to the West Indies. In 1796 Dyott fought against Fédon's rebellion on Grenada, returning at the end of the year having lost the majority of his regiment to yellow fever.
After several more staff appointments Dyott took the 25th to serve in the liberation of French-occupied Egypt in 1801, arriving too late to participate in most of the campaign but seeing action at the siege of Alexandria. In the first years of the ensuing Napoleonic Wars Dyott worked as a staff officer in Ireland, and also served George III as an aide de camp. Promoted to major-general in 1809 Dyott was ordered to take command of a brigade in the Peninsular War, but his appointment was cancelled when the army was evacuated after the Battle of Corunna. Later in the year Dyott was appointed to a different brigade for the Walcheren Campaign. Quickly beset by fevers, the campaign stagnated. Dyott formed part of the garrison on Walcheren before his return to England in October.
Dyott declined to serve in the new Peninsular Army under Lord Wellington in 1810 and saw no further active service.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Dyott” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.