Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard

Rating:
Summary: Adventures of Gerard
Review: Arthur Conan Doyle is in my estimation one of the true great writers. In this tale of the French officer he has proven not only to be a great Mystery writer ( Sherlock ) but can as easly step into history and Humor. Gerard is a fine warrior, bent on keeping up the french soldier's image as not only a getleman but also a fine tuned strategist and fighter but also extremely naieve when it comes to other cultures. This is one of the best comedy pieces I have ever read and believe it to be one of Doyles best, and I have read almost all of his works.

Rating:
Summary: Classic entertainment for Napoleonic war enthusiasts
Review: Brigadier Gerard is everything that a Briton of Conan Doyle's time thought was an exemplar of the Napoleonic officer - and to a certain extent a charicature of the French themselves. Hopelessly and ridiculously brave, completely lacking in appreciation of the fine British virtues of sportsmanship, a devotion to L'Empereur, rather dim, obsessed with his honor and the honor of La France, and yet rather admirable too in his prickly way.

In this fine book the Brigadier regales us with stories of his youth, when most of Europe was part of the French Empire and opportunities abounded for young men who looked good in cavalry uniform. Gerard tells the story with no irony, but the reader laughs a good deal at the absurdities of the hero. When attempting to shoot the ash off a cigar he destroys the whole cigar instead to the dismay of its smoker who is smoking it at the time. Clearly, Gerard maintains, the pistol is at fault. On a few occasions he succeeds when all expect him to fail and as a result his success is actually a failure. The stories encompass many of the great events of the Napoleonic wars: the horrors of partisan fighting in Spain, the invasion of Russia, war in the German states and Prussia, even capture by the British. Always the stories are superbly told with a very fine eye for realistic detail and they are often quite gripping. Again this is one of those books I am amazed has never been made into a film or a TV series.

George MacDonald Fraser has taken a good deal of the Gerard style for his Flashman series, although of course the two characters are poles apart in morality.

I recommend this book to all lovers of history novels and also to anyone who just likes to read superb stories in the grand old manner, where manly men are engaged in "honest" combat, and where evil enemies, treacherous peasants, and duplicitous politicos usually meet their doom under Gerard's cavalry saber.

Rating:
Summary: A Marvelously Thick-Headed and Gallant Sharpe
Review: For those who only know Conan Doyle via his Sherlock Holmes tales, his second most popular fictional creation may come as quite a revelation. With the eighteen "Brigadier Gerard" tales collected here, he created an affectionately mocking portrait of a swashbuckling French cavalry officer of the Napoleonic era. Gerard is a wonderful comic character, in his own not so humble opinion the foremost rider and swordsmen in all the Grand Armeé, he's also a favorite of the ladies, a stickler on points of honor, first volunteer for hazardous missions-and unbeknownst to him, marvelously thickheaded.

His "exploits and adventures" are presented as reminisces by the old grizzled officer, long into his dotage. Since he doesn't tell these in chronological order, this can be momentarily disconcerting, but only momentarily. Each episode runs approximately 20 to 30 pages and generally concerns some individual adventure he's assigned to or stumbles into. These are uniformly entertaining old-fashioned adventures in which Gerard sometimes triumphs, sometimes fails, but always upholds the honor and glory of the Emperor. He makes an interesting counterpart to Bernard Cornwell's gritty and equally heroic fictional British veteran of the Napoleonic wars, Richard Sharpe.

This new edition is to be commended, but it could have been further improved with the addition of a few maps, a general chronology of the Napoleonic era, and a glossary of the frequently used military terms of the era. Still, these are quibbles, and anyone with more than a passing familiarity with Napoleonic history will have no problems enjoying Gerard's tales.

Rating:
Summary: A Marvelously Thick-Headed and Gallant Sharpe
Review: For those who only know Conan Doyle via his Sherlock Holmes tales, his second most popular fictional creation may come as quite a revelation. With the eighteen "Brigadier Gerard" tales collected here, he created an affectionately mocking portrait of a swashbuckling French cavalry officer of the Napoleonic era. Gerard is a wonderful comic character, in his own not so humble opinion the foremost rider and swordsmen in all the Grand Armeé, he's also a favorite of the ladies, a stickler on points of honor, first volunteer for hazardous missions-and unbeknownst to him, marvelously thickheaded.

His "exploits and adventures" are presented as reminisces by the old grizzled officer, long into his dotage. Since he doesn't tell these in chronological order, this can be momentarily disconcerting, but only momentarily. Each episode runs approximately 20 to 30 pages and generally concerns some individual adventure he's assigned to or stumbles into. These are uniformly entertaining old-fashioned adventures in which Gerard sometimes triumphs, sometimes fails, but always upholds the honor and glory of the Emperor. He makes an interesting counterpart to Bernard Cornwell's gritty and equally heroic fictional British veteran of the Napoleonic wars, Richard Sharpe.

This new edition is to be commended, but it could have been further improved with the addition of a few maps, a general chronology of the Napoleonic era, and a glossary of the frequently used military terms of the era. Still, these are quibbles, and anyone with more than a passing familiarity with Napoleonic history will have no problems enjoying Gerard's tales.

Rating:
Summary: Vive l'Empereur
Review: Gerard is depicted as the best rider and swordsman in all of France (and beyond). As a young, egotistical officer, he quickly rises through the ranks by completing daring, yet comical adventures. I believe this to be Doyle's best work, since it is so well-rounded. Sometimes it is confusing when the chapters skip around. One minute he's 30 years old, the next 28. But this is because Gerard is telling his old war stories at a café throughout the book, and he skips around a bit. Highly recommended to fans of Doyle, or fanatics of Napoleon (especially the cavalry re-enactors).

Rating:
Summary: Great stories from a great writer
Review: Having been previously only acquainted with Holmes & Watson these pieces came as a very pleasant surprise, with an adroit combination of ripping yarns & derring do filtered through the very unreliable recollections of an amusingly self-deluded hero. Although we are invited to laugh (and frequently do) at the brigadier's bluster and egotism, Conan Doyle never stoops to making his character a figure of simple mockery but instead treads a fine line between satire and affection.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful story of a Napoleonic hero
Review: I knew Arthur Conan Doyle from his Sherlock Holmes series although I have not read any title from that. The "Exploits and Adventures of Birgadier Gerard" is surely one of the finest novels about the Napoleonic era and I highly recommend it to any fan of the Grand Armee and its battle hardened soldiers. The story begins with the long retired Brigadier starting to recall his war memories for the shake of his audience, over a glass of wine. And what a fascinating carreer did he have! He was a romantic lover, a proud Frenchman, an honest man, a terrific swordsman, a dashing cavalryman, and a soldier absolutely faithful to his duty: the real epitome of the French hussar who according to Colonel Lassale "should not live beyond the age of 30"! The old Brigadier explains with graphic detail and an amusing dose of egotism and pride how he lost his ear for the love of a girl in Venice, how he helped French troops to storm the spanish fortress of Saragossa, how he saved a whole army in the Peninsula, how he extricated himself from a grevious tactical mistake in Russia, how he beat the Englishmen in their national sport of fox-hunting and how Destiny prevented him from taking part in the climactic battle of Waterloo, a fact that Gerard honestly believes that doomed Napoleon! To build his story Doyle took many interesting facts and legends from real biographies of the period, like that of Baron de Marbot, but he made his story so enjoyable and colourful that is incomperable in terms of advenures and amusement.

Rating:
Summary: an excellent read
Review: I was expecting to be disappointed with these stories since I knew I would be comparing them to the Sherlock Holmes stories. But I enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed the Holmes stories and when I had finished the book I found myself wishing that Doyle had written more stories about the Brigadier Gerard. Gerard is a very different character than Holmes but the characterization is just as brilliant. I highly recommend this book.