By his own account, Etienne Gerard is the most supreme specimen of French soldiery to be found in all of Napoleon's empire. (To everyone else, he is a hare-brained Hussar ricocheting blithely through the wars, trailing havoc in his wake.) Reminiscing over the campaigning exploits of his youth - from attempting to explode a Spanish convent, to venturing behind enemy lines only to be swept up in a British fox-hunt - the Brigadier has, somehow, always won through with his honour and dignity (mostly) intact. For, as his beloved Emperor observes, though Gerard may possess the thickest head in the whole French army, he has also the stoutest heart...
