'The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard ' Summary

Gerard tells the stories from the point of view of an old man now living in retirement in Paris. We discover that he was born in Gascony in the early 1780s (he is 25 in "How the Brigadier Captured Saragossa"). In How the Brigadier Rode to Minsk he attends a review of troops about to depart for the Crimea (1854–5), and this is the last identifiable date in his life, although The Last Adventure of the Brigadier has a still later setting, with Gerard about to return to his Gascon homeland. He first joins the 2nd Hussars – the Hussars of Chamberan – around 1799, serving as a lieutenant and junior captain. He first sees action at Marengo in Italy in 1800. He transfers to the 3rd Hussars of Conflans in 1807 as a senior captain. He speaks somewhat idiosyncratic English, having learned it from an officer of the Irish Brigade of the French Army. By 1810 he is colonel of the 2nd Hussars. He serves in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Russia. He is awarded the Grand-Cross of the Légion d'honneur by Napoleon in 1814. There are various discrepancies in the accounts of his life, not the least that in none of the stories except the last is he married.

Conan Doyle modelled the comedic character of Gerard on a number of real-life sources from the Napoleonic era, writing in his author's preface that "readers of Marbot, de Gonneville, Coignet, de Fenezac, Bourgogne, and the other French soldiers who have recorded their reminiscences of the Napoleonic campaigns will recognise the fountain from which I have drawn the adventures of Etienne Gerard." Conan Doyle enthusiasts have noted that although Gerard is a fictional character, he may have been inspired in particular by the real-life Baron Marcellin Marbot (1782–1854), a noted French light cavalry officer during the Napoleonic Wars. Marbot's memoirs depicting the Napoleonic age of warfare had become very popular prior to the publication of Doyle's series about Brigadier Gerard and were praised by Doyle as being the best soldier's book known to him.