A look at 18th-century France, when the authorities' depravity contribute to social oppression, and the uprisings flare up one after another.

France, 1719. Four years after Louis XIV's death, Philippe d'Orléans is the regent for the nine-year-old Louis XV. Philippe is a liberal and a libertine. His right-hand man, Dubois, an atheistic and cupid priest, as libertine as Philippe, tries to take advantage of a little rebellion lead by a Breton squire named Pontallec and of the famine to become archbishop.—Yepok