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Gerard, Brigadier. Brigadier Gerard was created by Arthur Conan Doyle (Professor Challenger, Sherlock Holmes) and appeared in seventeen stories from 1894 to 1906, beginning with “How the Brigadier Won His Metal” (The Strand Magazine, Dec. 1894); the stories were collected in The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896) and Adventures of Gerard (1903).

Étienne Gerard is a member of Napoleon’s 10^th Hussars and is proud to serve under the Emperor, despite the fact that, like the rest of the Grande Armée, Gerard is afraid of Napoleon. Decades after Napoleon’s death Gerard continues to boast about his service. He is vain, but is nearly as good a swordsman, cavalry officer, and horseman as he thinks he is, and his exploits do much to justify his impression of himself. Gerard fights any number of duels, carries out several of the Emperor’s intrigues, escapes from Dartmoor prison and the clutches of a ruthless Spanish bandit, captures Saragossa single handedly, woos any number of women, befriends English officers, and in general has a fine old time adventuring his way across Europe and Russia. Gerard is not particularly bright, but he is clever enough to get himself out of the difficult situations his ego or occasional gullibility has placed him into.

* I'm including the Brigadier Gerard stories in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because of the pleasure they bring the reader and the skill with which they were written. As is well-known by now, A. Conan Doyle didn't esteem his Sherlock Holmes stories nearly as highly as he did his historical fictions. I agree with Doyle; the Holmes stories were competent, professional work, but the historical fictions were where Doyle poured his heart and soul into, and on which he spent the most time, and those things are visible in the historical fictions. For me, the Brigadier Gerard stories were Doyle's best historical fictions. They are great fun, not least because Gerard is a vain, boastful man who somehow becomes appealing despite his vanity and who is, as mentioned above, nearly as good a swordsman and horseman as he thinks he is. Doyle creates great situations and side characters for Gerard to interact with and escape from or triumph at. Plus Doyle will, every now and again, slip a sudden moment of gravity and somberness into the stories--a line here, a paragraph there, famously the beginning paragraphs of "How the Brigadier Rode to Minsk"--that not only surprise and please by the way they provide a counterpoint to the general levity of the stories, but also show that, when he wanted to, A. Conan Doyle could do sadness and tragedy rather well. Highly recommended. 

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