In October 1942, as an offensive was launched against Rommel's troops, a vehicle carrying a doctor and four nurses strayed into the desert. Prisoners of a German unit and aware that it was going to use them to ambush the Allied relief column, they set out to foil the plan.

Cardinal Mazarin dies, leaving a power vacuum in which the young Louis asserts his intention to govern as well as rule. Mazarin's fiscal advisor, Colbert, warns against Fouquet, the Superintendant who has been systematically looting the treasury and wants to be prime minister. Fouquet believes Louis will soon tire of exercizing power and overplays his hand by offering a bribe to Louis' mistress to be his ally. She reports this to the king who arrests Fouquet. Louis and Colbert design a brilliant strategy to keep merchants making money, nobles in debt, the urban poor working and fed, and peasants untaxed.

Three little criminals get a tip for a great coup with lots of money in it. Unfortunately they lack the starting funds to buy the required welding torch. So they persuade their successful colleague Alphonse to join their team. But the well thought-out coup fails, and Alphonse is the only one of them who ends up in jail for several years. When he's released, he's out for revenge.

During World War II a young Frenchmen sees his brother killed in Alsace by a German officer. He vows revenge on all Germans, but after the War he is conscripted into the French Army and sent to Indochina. There he meets his brother's killer under strange circumstances.