Episode list

At the beginning of 1804, Bonaparte is the target of royalist attacks. The arrest of the plotter Cadoudal brings to light the underground action of the exiled princes. Bonaparte and Savary, his future Minister of Police, become suspicious of Louis-Antoine de Bourbon-Condé, Duke of Enghien, a refugee in Baden, whom they decide to kidnap. The operation takes place on the night of 15 March; immediately after being incarcerated in the Château de Vincennes, on 20 March, the Duke is tried by a military tribunal during the night and executed in the ditches of Vincennes in the morning.

The action takes place in 1797 and 1798. In the aftermath of the coup d'état of Fructidor, the Directory takes draconian measures against the royalists. A decree condemns to death any emigrant arrested on the territory of the Republic. The young, pretty and witty "citizen" Victoire de la Villirouët receives her husband, the Count de la Villirouët, an ex-emigrant, at her home under an assumed name. He is quickly arrested and brought before the Military Tribunal, where he risks the death penalty. Victoire thinks only of saving her husband, whom she loves passionately. After a hundred difficulties, she obtains the right to defend him herself, as the law does not prevent this. And on 23 March 1799, she pleads for him.

Based on the personal notes of Monsieur de La Reynie, the lieutenant general of police who investigated and then prosecuted the famous poisons affair, the authors bring to life one of the greatest scandals of the reign of Louis XIV. Faithless people, alchemists, counterfeiters and the highest aristocracy were involved in the affair. 147 defendants were imprisoned. The arrest of la Voisin revealed the scandal: sacrilegious practices, black masses, and above all the fact that an entire society had recourse to poisons to solve their problems. Various powders were commonly used to make an affair last or to get rid of a troublesome husband. On 29 February 1680, after being tortured, La Voisin was burnt alive. After her death, Monsieur de La Reynie received a confession from her daughter, who accused Madame de Montespan, the king's favorite, of having been her mother's client.

A year before the revolution, one day in 1847, at dawn, the servants of the Sébastiani Hotel discover the body of their mistress brutally stabbed. The police investigate immediately. Who could have committed this crime and what motives led the assassin to such violence? The case takes on worrying proportions, as the victim's husband, a peer of France, is implicated. Did the Duke of Praslin really murder his wife? Why, when everything accuses him, does he persist in denying the crime? What role did the Duke's governess, Henriette Deluzy, play in this tragedy? Was the victim an unbalanced woman or a tyrannized mother?

The story of the conspiration fomented by the Marquis de Cinq-Mars, favorite of King Louis XIII, with his friend de Thou against the Cardinal de Richelieu. This leads to the ruthless repression instigated by the Cardinal against the conspirators who die by the guillotine.

In April 1796, the Paris-Lyon mail coach was found abandoned in the Sénart forest, between Lieusaint and Montgeron. The courier and the postman were dead. The coach was carrying seven million gold assignats intended for Bonaparte's army in Italy. Four men are first arrested, then two others. One of them vainly protests his innocence. He is condemned and guillotined on the basis of witnesses who claim to recognize him. However, on the scaffold, one of the bandits reveals to the judge that it was a tragic mistake due to the convict's physical resemblance to the real culprit, whom he names before dying.