I have seen a great many cities, my friends. I would not dare to tell you how many I have entered as a conqueror, with eight hundred of my little fighting devils clanking and jingling behind me! So begin the adventures of a band of French Hussars during "that inconceivable Napoleonic past when France, like an angel of wrath, rose up, splendid and terrible, before a cowering continent." Famous for his literary creation Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) brought other characters to notably forceful life upon the page, including that brilliant battler well-hated by the English of Wellington's Army -- the Brigadier Gerard!