[2] The title is a reference to “The Soldiers of Year II”, the conscripts raised by the Levée en masse in 1793 to defend the French First Republic against foreign invaders.

Having killed a noble too friendly with his wife Charlotte, Nicolas Phillibert flees from France to South Carolina, where he does well and wants to marry a rich man's daughter.

Taken to a republican ceremony in the cathedral, he saves the life of a royalist girl, Pauline, and escapes with her to an isolated castle.

A prince arrives from London to organise resistance in the Vendée and is struck by Charlotte, who was told by a gypsy that she would become a princess.

She admits that she is married to Nicolas, so the prince has him drugged and carried into the Hôtel de Ville in Nantes to get a divorce.