Gaul, 52 BC. A civilisation is fighting for its life.

Julius Caesar has spent eight years conquering tribe after tribe, playing the Gauls against each other, rewarding collaborators and annihilating rebels. By the spring of 52 BC, the end is in sight. Most of Gaul is under Roman control. The greatest military machine the ancient world has ever seen is closing in on the last holdouts.

And then something happens that Caesar did not anticipate. The tribes unite. Under a single commander. A chieftain from the Arverni who does what nobody has managed before — persuades generations of rivals to set aside their grudges and fight together. Who devises a strategy that brings Caesar closer to defeat than he will ever publicly admit. Who forces the greatest general in the ancient world to build two walls and fight on two fronts simultaneously, just to beat him.

What follows is one of the most extraordinary stories in ancient history. And one of the strangest afterlives. Because Vercingetorix would spend six years in a Roman dungeon, be strangled on the day of Caesar's triumph, and then be almost entirely forgotten for nearly two thousand years — before being resurrected by Napoleon III, turned into a French founding father by the Third Republic, and taught to children across the French empire as proof that their ancestors were Gauls.

In the fifth episode of L'Étranger, we tell the full story: from the tribal world Caesar found when he arrived in Gaul, to the double siege of Alesia, to the deep irony at the heart of how France remembers the man who was fighting against the very forces that created her.

And the question that lingers: does Vercingetorix belong to France at all?

France, 1624. A kingdom is fracturing at the seams.

The great noble families are raising private armies. The Huguenots control their own fortified cities and answer to nobody. A queen mother who nobody trusts has reversed the foreign policy of her dead husband and aligned France with its most powerful enemies. And on the throne sits a king who knows he cannot govern alone.

Into this volatile world steps a minor bishop from one of the poorest dioceses in France. A man who had already risen, fallen, and spent seven years in the political wilderness waiting for his moment. A man with a plan, four promises to his king, and the patience and ruthlessness to see them through.

What follows is one of the most remarkable political careers in European history. A cardinal who cared nothing for God, who funded Protestant armies while crushing Protestants at home, who destroyed everyone who stood in his way and built France into the dominant power in Europe. Who survived plots, conspiracies, and a queen mother who thought she had finally finished him. And who, on his deathbed, when asked if he wished to forgive his enemies, replied that he had never had any personal enemies. Only enemies of the state.

In the fourth episode of L'Étranger, we tell the full story: from the Estates General of 1614 to the siege of La Rochelle, from the Day of the Dupes to the Académie Française, from the execution of Montmorency to the deathbed of the most powerful man in France.

And the question Dumas never answered: was Cardinal Richelieu a villain? Or the man who saved France?

France, 1429. A kingdom is on the brink of collapse.

The English have been besieging Orléans for months. The heir to the French throne has fled south and is clinging to power by a thread. An alliance between England and the most powerful duke in France has turned a war between two kingdoms into a civil war as well. By the spring of 1429, English victory looks not just likely, but inevitable.

And then a teenage girl from a village in Lorraine arrives at the royal court and says she has been sent by God to fix it.

What follows is one of the most extraordinary stories in history. A seventeen year old with no title, no army and no right to be in any room she walked into, who lifted a siege in nine days, destroyed the English field army at Patay, and delivered a king to his coronation through enemy territory. Who was then abandoned by that king, sold to his enemies, subjected to a rigged trial by the finest legal minds in Europe, and who never broke. Not once. Until they had to manufacture her downfall.

In the third episode of L'Étranger, we tell the full story: from the village of Domrémy to the court at Chinon, from the walls of Orléans to the coronation at Reims, from the gate at Compiègne that closed too early to the public square in Rouen where it ended.

And the question that has never quite gone away, did the king she saved lift a finger to save her?

France, 1870. An empire is about to fall.

The Franco-Prussian War lasted less than seven months. In that time, Napoleon III surrendered his army in tears to a Prussian chancellor in an inn courtyard, Paris was besieged and starved for 135 days, and the German Empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles - the most French palace on earth.

It is one of the most consequential and least understood wars in modern history. The conflict that ended the Second French Empire, unified Germany, and planted the seeds of both World Wars.

In the first episode of L'Étranger, we tell the full story - from Bismarck's trap to the fall of Paris, from the battlefield of Sedan to the bitter peace that left France humiliated and Europe transformed.