User:Gildir/Jules Gérard

Jules Basile Gérard (14 June 1817, Pignans – September 1864, Sierra Leone), known as "le tueur de lions" ("the lion killer"), was a French military officer, explorer and hunter.

Biography
Jules Gérard was the son of François-Calixte Gérard, collector of direct taxes in Pignans, who died in 1829.

Gérard completed his studies at the age of fifteen and distinguished himself by his passion for hunting and handling weapons. He reluctantly escaped conscription by receiving a good draft number, and enlisted on 13 June 1842 in the 3rd regiment of Spahis stationed in Bône, Algeria.

Appointed brigadier in early 1843, Gérard volunteered to join the squadron at Guelma. It was near this outpost that he killed his first lion, a beast known as Atlas who terrorized the region's inhabitants, on 8 July 1844. Subsequently he killed many other lions. He is estimated to have killed 26 big cats by 1857.

Gérard was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1847 and promoted from sergeant to second lieutenant in the 3rd regiment of Spahis in recognition of his conduct at the siege of Zaatcha (1849). Attached to the Arab Bureau of Constantine, he was subsequently promoted to lieutenant and then, between 1855 and 1857, to captain.

Gérard's exploits as a lion hunter brought him the esteem of the most prominent figures of the time, who gave him weapons as awards: Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale, presented him with a gun; Prince Philippe, Count of Paris, gave him guns that belonged to his father, Ferdinand Philippe; the Emperor of Austria gave him a hunting arsenal precision rifle; and Napoleon III awarded him a very expensive gun as a first prize at the Vincennes shooting contest (1860). In 1848, while Gérard was visiting France, Lieutenant General Marie Alphonse Bedeau presented him with a hunting knife given by the Journal des Chasseurs (directed by Léon Bertrand, a relative of Bedeau) and by the arquebusier Devisme.

At the request of his friends and admirers, Gérard told the story of his adventures in the book La Chasse au Lion (The Lion Hunt), which he dedicated to the Governor-General of Algeria, General Jacques Louis Randon. The 1855 edition of La Chasse au Lion was illustrated by Gustave Doré.

After several years of further exotic hunting (especially in the Himalayas), Captain Gérard decided to take part in the exploration of sub-Saharan Africa and obtained an indefinite leave from the French government for this purpose. In early 1862 he founded the Société africaine internationale, exploratrice, cynégétique et zoologique ("International African Society for Exploration, Hunting and Zoology"), which was to organize hunting trips in Africa and facilitate exploration between Algeria and the coast of Senegal. Approved by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, the society counted Prince Richard von Metternich, General Eugène Daumas, Louis Félicien de Saulcy and the scholar Edme-François Jomard among its founding members.

Gérard struggled to find financial support in France, especially from the Société de géographie. He turned to Britain, asking the Royal Geographical Society and other wealthy patrons to finance an expedition between the Gold Coast and the mountainous region, at that time not yet explored, from Kong to the north of Kumasi (in the Ashanti Region). Gérard obtained astronomical instruments from the institution but had to scale back his ambitions before landing at Lagos with one Arab servant. Glele, the King of Dahomey, refused him passage through his territory.

Abandoning his original plan, Gérard went to Sierra Leone in 1864. Trying to reach the source of the Niger River to eventually go down it to Timbuktu, he died either going up or crossing the River Jong, probably ambushed by his own carriers in revenge for ill-treatment by Gérard. The news of his death reached a French merchant on Sherbro Island named Huchard, who informed the vice-consul of France of Gérard's death in a letter dated 15 October 1864.

According to tradition, Gérard's exploits inspired those of one of the characters in Tartarin of Tarascon, a novel by Alphonse Daudet.

In 1964, on the centennial of Gérard's death, a monument to him was erected in Pignans, his home town.