Chapter 3

How the Brigadier Slew the Fox
(This story, already published in The Green Flag, is included
here so that all of the Brigadier Gerard stories may appear
together.)

--

In all the great hosts of France there was only one officer
toward whom the English of Wellington's Army retained a deep,
steady, and unchangeable hatred.

There were plunderers among the French, and men of violence,
gamblers, duellists, and roues. All these could be forgiven, for
others of their kidney were to be found among the ranks of the
English. But one officer of Massena's force had committed a
crime which was unspeakable, unheard of, abominable; only to be
alluded to with curses late in the evening, when a second bottle
had loosened the tongues of men. The news of it was carried back
to England, and country gentlemen who knew little of the details
of the war grew crimson with passion when they heard of it, and
yeomen of the shires raised freckled fists to Heaven and swore.
And yet who should be the doer of this dreadful deed but our
friend the Brigadier, Etienne Gerard, of the Hussars of Conflans,
gay-riding, plume-tossing, debonair, the darling of the ladies
and of the six brigades of light cavalry.

But the strange part of it is that this gallant gentleman did
this hateful thing, and made himself the most unpopular man in
the Peninsula, without ever knowing that he had done a crime for
which there is hardly a name amid all the resources of our
language. He died of old age, and never once in that
imperturbable self- confidence which adorned or disfigured his
character knew that so many thousand Englishmen would gladly have
hanged him with their own hands. On the contrary, he numbered
this adventure among those other exploits which he has given to
the world, and many a time he chuckled and hugged himself as he
narrated it to the eager circle who gathered round him in that
humble cafe where, between his dinner and his dominoes, he would
tell, amid tears and laughter, of that inconceivable Napoleonic
past when France, like an angel of wrath, rose up, splendid and
terrible, before a cowering continent. Let us listen to him as
he tells the story in his own way and from his own point of view.

You must know, my friends, said he, that it was toward the end of
the year eighteen hundred and ten that I and Massena and the
others pushed Wellington backward until we had hoped to drive him
and his army into the Tagus. But when we were still twenty-five
miles from Lisbon we found that we were betrayed, for what had
this Englishman done but build an enormous line of works and
forts at a place called Torres Vedras, so that even we were
unable to get through them! They lay across the whole Peninsula,