Brigadier Gerard (horse) the Sussex Stakes and the Lockinge Stakes, and the non-winning racemare, La Paiva, a daughter of Prince Chevalier. On his female side he traced back to the brilliant fillies' Triple Crown winner, Pretty Polly, who was his fifth dam. This beautifully balanced bay colt was named after Arthur Conan Doyle's swashbuckling hero. Brigadier Gerard had good conformation, an excellent temperament and stood 16 hands 2 inches high. Brigadier Gerard was trained during his racing career by Major Dick Hern and ridden in all his races by Joe Mercer. Brigadier Gerard began his two-year-old career on 24 June 1970 in the
Brigadier Gerard wrote with great affection about Marbot's memoirs in "Through the Magic Door". He also drew on other contemporary sources, writing in an 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." The fictional Gerard is not to be confused with the real Napoleonic officer Étienne Maurice Gérard (1777–1852), who rose to become a Marshal and later Prime Minister of France. The stories were originally published in the "Strand Magazine"