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François de Charette (John Shrapnel) is a royalist general who raises a force of French exiles to restore the king to power. He is supported by the British government who provide Royal Navy vessels to ferry a combined expeditionary force of French royalist troops (the "frogs") and a half-battalion of British redcoats (the "lobsters") across the English Channel to Quiberon, but one important thing has gone wrong. A lieutenant carrying a copy of the orders has been murdered and the orders stolen. Captain Pellew, who is in charge of the transports, believes this to be the work of French spies and begs his superiors to call off the invasion, but they ignore him and the army sets off for disaster. Horatio Hornblower, the central character, is assigned to a division of the invading army that is to hold the bridge at Muzillac. The French officer in charge of the royalist forces is a nobleman who held feudal authority over the region prior to the revolution. He is obsessed with revenge, to the extent of guillotining all the republican officials and supporters who are taken prisoner. The French revolutionary forces counterattack, destroy the royalist invaders and execute their leader using the same guillotine. Hornblower and his small naval detachment manage to reach the British troops, who conduct a disciplined retreat and reach their ships.

The main departure from the original story is the introduction of French peasant girl Mariette (Estelle Skornik), now a schoolteacher with fluent English. She and Hornblower fall in love, but she is killed by French revolutionary troops en route back to his ship as she tries to escape with him.