The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard - How the King Held the Brigadier Part 1

**Étienne Gérard** (0:00)
Chapter IV Of The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
How the King Held the Brigadier Murat was undoubtedly an excellent cavalry officer, but he had too much swagger, which spoils many a good soldier. LaSalle, too, was a very dashing leader, but he ruined himself with wine and folly. Now I, Etienne Gerard, was always totally devoid of swagger, and at the same time I was very abstemious, except maybe at the end of a campaign, or when I met an old comrade in arms.
For these reasons I might, perhaps, had it not been for a certain diffidence, have claimed to be the most valuable officer in my own branch of the service. It is true that I never rose to be more than a chief of brigade, but then, as everyone knows, no one had a chance of rising to the top unless he had the good fortune to be with the emperor in his early campaigns. Except La Salle, and Le Beaux, and Drouet, I can hardly remember any one of the generals who had not already made his name before the Egyptian business.
Even I, with all my brilliant qualities, could only attain the head of my brigade, and also the special Medal of Honour, which I received from the emperor himself, and which I keep at home in the leathern pouch. But though I never rose higher than this, my qualities were very well known to those who had served with me, and also to the English. After they had captured me, in the way which I described to you the other night, they kept a very good guard over me at a porto, and I promise you that they did not give such a formidable opponent a chance of slipping through their fingers.
It was on the 10th of August that I was escorted on board the transport which was to take us to England, and behold me before the end of the month in the great prison which had been built for us at Dartmoor, L'Hôtel Français et Pension we used to call it, for you understand that we were all brave men there, and that we did not lose our spirits because we were in adversity. It was only those officers who refused to give their parole who were confined at Dartmoor, and most of the prisoners were seaman or from the ranks. You ask me perhaps why it was that I did not give this parole, and so enjoy the same good treatment as most of my brother officers. Well, I had two reasons, and both of them were sufficiently strong.
In the first place, I had so much confidence in myself that I was quite convinced that I could escape. In the second, my family, though of good repute, has never been wealthy, and I could not bring myself to take anything from the small income of my mother. On the other hand, it would never do for a man like me to be outshone by the bourgeois society of an English country town, or to be without the means of showing courtesies and attentions to those ladies whom I should attract. It was for these reasons that I preferred to be buried in the dreadful prison of Darkmoor. I wish now to tell you of my adventures in England, and how far Milor Wellington's words were true when he said that his king would hold me.
And first of all I may say, that if it were not that I have set off to tell you about what befell myself, I could keep you here until morning with my stories about Darkmoor itself, and about the singular things which occurred there.
It was one of the very strangest places in the whole world, for there, in the middle of that great desolate waste, were herded together seven or eight thousand men, warriors, you understand, men of experience and courage. Around there were a double wall and a ditch, and warders and soldiers, but my faith you could not coop men like that up like rabbits in a hutch. They would escape by twos and tens and twenties, and then the cannon would boom and the search parties run, and we who were left behind would laugh and dance and shout, Vive l'empereur! Until the warders would turn their muskets upon us in their passion, and then we would have our little mutinies too, and up would come the infantry and the guns from Plymouth, and that would set us yelling, Vive l'empereur! Once more, as though we wished them to hear us in Paris. We had lively moments at Dartmoor, and we contrived that those who were about us should be lively also. You must know that the prisoners there had their own courts of justice, in which they tried their own cases and inflicted their own punishments. Stealing and quarrelling were punished, but most of all treachery. When I came there first, there was a man, Mounier, from Rhames, who had given information of some plot to escape. Well, that night, owing to some form or other which had to be gone through, they did not take him out from among the other prisoners, and though he wept and screamed and groveled upon the ground, they left him there amongst the comrades whom he had betrayed. That night there was a trial with a whispered accusation and a whispered defence, a gagged prisoner and a judge whom none could see. In the morning, when they came for their man with papers for his release, there was not as much of him left as you could put upon your thumbnail. They were ingenious people, these prisoners, and they had their own way of managing. We officers, however, lived in a separate wing and a very singular group of people we were. They had left us our uniforms, so that there was hardly a corpse which had served under Victor or Messina or Ney, which was not represented there, and some had been there from the time when Juno was beaten at Vimiera.