Charles Wentworth Dilke

Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke was a British officer whose career exemplified the steady, workmanlike competence upon which Wellington’s armies so often relied. Active in the later Peninsular campaigns, he appears in contemporary staff tables as a brigade-level commander of respectable, if not flamboyant, ability — the sort of officer who maintained order on the march, kept his battalions in fighting trim, and executed his duties with the quiet diligence prized in the Anglo-Portuguese army. His record stands as a reminder that wars are carried forward not only by the celebrated captains of the age but also by the innumerable competent officers who held the line, day after day, in the dust of Spain.