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) run poorly in his previous race, the Irish Derby, but, ridden by the Panamanian jockey Braulio Baeza, ran the race of his life with a front-running display, which shattered the course record, to defeat Brigadier Gerard by three lengths. There was a gap of ten lengths back to Gold Rod, who beat Rheingold for third. According to Joe Mercer, his horse was sick: "... when they got back to the stables and the horse put his head down, the mucus poured out of him. He was sick, yet he was still able to run second to the Derby winner, giving