The Scarlet Pimpernel rescues a Baroness from Chauvelin, but she is reluctant to leave because Chauvelin has her son. The Scarlet Pimpernel must rescue the boy and not give away his identity as Sir Percy Blakeney.
Countess Caroline is arrested for treason by Chauvelin and sentenced to the guillotine. Her life will be spared if the Scarlet Pimpernel ceases his clandestine activities.
The Pimpernel rescues the Marquise de Manton and returns to Paris disguised as Pierre, a peasant, to rescue her maid and in making their escape from prison imagines what might have been if he was not aristocracy.
Chauvelin sets up a trap and captures Melanie and Alice as they try to flee France. Sir Percy and Lord Hastings must rescue the damsels in distress.
The Pimpernel plans to free a woman from the guillotine but it is a trap by Chauvelin and Cecile, who holds the Pimpernel responsible for her brother's death. In the rescue the Pimpernel is shot and his right arm is wounded with a sword.
Sir Percy, with his wounded right arm in a sling, is asked by Melaine, whom the Pimpernel once rescued, to aid her brother, Jacques Fleury. The aid wanted is weapons to fight Chauvelin, but the Pimpernel remembers wars fought between Britain and France and only agrees to destroy the weapons.
Chauvelin comes to England with a plan to capture the Pimpernel but takes the wrong man. Sir Percy must travel to France to rescue the young man but can only accomplish it disguised as Chauvelin.
An Englishman murdering French aristocrats is impersonating the Pimpernel. Sir Percy engineers a plan that allows his capture and execution by Chauvelin.
An American woman is arrested as the Pimpernel and her brother, Frank Rawlinson, sanctioned by John Adams, needs the Pimpernel's help to rescue her, as he had recently been wounded in a duel with Sir Percy.
Shot and wounded by revolutionaries, Sir Andrew leaps from a coach in a daring escape. He is hidden and nursed by his lover, Colette, who desperately tries to throw the French authorities off his track.
An illicit affair between Lady Fleury and Englishman Richard Hastings leads to the murder of the salacious woman with Hasting being charged with the murder.
Mrs. Burton, Sir Percy's housekeeper, laments Christmases past when many children lived in the house. She is upset when Sir Percy leaves her alone to go to France to rescue four aristocrats that, to his astonishment, are small children. In his effort to save them he collects a donkey and a dog, despite pursuit by Chauvelin's soldiers, and brings them home, much to Mrs Burton's pleasure.
The Comtesse de la Vallire, a spy of Chauvelin, has known for sometime Percy is the Scarlet Pimpernel and when she hears one of her friends, an imprisoned leader of the revolution, is to be executed by the Committee of Public Safety, she enlists his help. He dressed as a blind man and she as a flower woman try to save the prisoners in an event known as the September massacres but only 30 are saved and her friend has already been executed.
Sir Percy discovers that Chauvelin is blackmailing the banker Rothstein by holding his daughter captive. Rothstein is ill with worry, Chauvelin is ill with gout, Rothstein's daughter is also ill. Sir Percy disguised as Chauvelin's doctor effects her rescue.
Antoine and Antoinette are waiting to be married when Chauvelin arrives and arrests them. Elise, the younger sister of Antoinette, who has a crush on the Pimpernel, escapes to try to reach England when she meets Sir Percy and his two associates on the road. Sir Percy disguised as the local judge rescues them and brings all three to England narrowly escaping capture by Chauvelin.
The Winged Madonna is an icon from one of France's dissolved monasteries. A girl trying to sell the icon to raise money for the monks and nuns draws Sir Percy and Hastings into devising not one but two plans of rescue when the Father Guardian refuses to leave so he can attend a pregnant woman. Disguised as an undertaker the Pimpernel visits Chauvelin to arrange a funeral.
When a beautiful woman shows an unusual interest in the Prince Regent's affairs, Sir Percy uncovers a plot to assassinate the Hanovarian Prince Regent using highwaymen, and restore a Stuart King to the throne of Great Britain. The Scarlet Pimpernel becomes a gentleman of the road to thwart the plan.
The Pimpernel rescues one of his agents and has to find the man's daughter before Chauvelin does. Disguised as a farm worker, he seeks a job at a farm owned by the girl's miserly uncle and meets the farmer's boy.