Brigadier Gerard and glory, he is always ready with a stirring speech or a gallant remark to a lady. Conan Doyle, in making his hero a vain, and often rather uncomprehending, Frenchman, was able to satirise both the stereotypical English view of the French and – by presenting them from Gerard's baffled point of view – English manners and attitudes. 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
Brigadier Gerard (horse) in the 1972 Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park Racecourse. The following year, Brigadier Gerard extended his unbeaten run to fifteen. In spring, he won the one-mile Lockinge Stakes and the ten-furlong Westbury Stakes, in which he conceded fourteen punds to the runner-up Ballyhot. At Royal Ascot, he won the Prince of Wales's Stakes by five lengths from Steel Pulse, setting a new course record. In the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park, on unfavourably soft ground, he won by a length from Gold Rod to take his unbeaten sequence to fourteen. In July, he moved up to one and half miles