Athos who has renounced his title is kidnapped by his tenants and discovers his neighbour Baron Renard is intent on taking his lands. Athos’s indifference to his tenants, because his wife Milady had killed his brother at the family home, shocks the other musketeers; but a meeting with his dead brother’s betrothed changes his mind and he agrees to give the tenants the land if they are prepared to fight for it; requiring the musketeers to train them.