It focuses on the adventures of Major Henri de Beaujolais from adolescence to maturity as a well-connected cavalry officer in the French Army: he's an Old Etonian; his mother a Devonshire Cary; his deceased father a Frenchman; his paternal uncle the youngest General in the French Army and married to the sister of the French Minister of State for War.

Starting as a one-year volunteer trooper in a hussar regiment, De Beaujolais graduates from the Saumur Cavalry School to become an officer of Spahis and a member of the French Secret Service.

He appears in Wren's Beau Geste, commanding the relief column which reaches the besieged Fort Zinderneuf.

It can be said that it is the French novel of the trilogy (or known as a trilogy if one takes no account of the books Good Gestes and Spanish Maine) as Beau Geste is the English one, and Beau Ideal the American one.

The New York Times complained about the "preposterous plot and inconceivable characters.