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
Gerard of Csanád (encompassing present-day Banat in Serbia, Romania and Hungary) around 1030. Benedictine monks who could speak Hungarian helped him to preach among the local inhabitants. Most information of Gerard was not preserved in impartial sources, but in his hagiographies. The "Short Life of Saint Gerard", which was composed around 1100, is an abridgement of an earlier biography. The earlier biography did not survive. The "Short Life" primarily presents Gerard as a bishop. The majority of scholars regard the "Short Life" the most reliable source of Gerard's life. The "Long Life of Saint Gerard" is a compilation of multiple sources, including the