In 1833, when the fledgling Belgian kingdom still fears a Dutch invasion, recruits were selected annually from an age cohort by a draw of lots in each locality. In this grim, then contemporary drama by the 'father of Flemish literature', Hendrik Conscience, Jan Braems, a poor and naive farmers-boy, accepts the not uncommon offer by a rich family to sell his lucky ticket (out) to their son for a hefty sum compared to the miserable labor wages at the time. Army life is even harsher then a farmhand's, especially for a Dutch-speaking an-alphabet who simply can't understand his francophone superiors, and Jan's nature is not complacent enough for military discipline even by todays standards, so he soon gets into all kinds of trouble, including gambling his capital away and a venereal disease. When his girlfriend back home goes looking for him, her life is doomed as well.

This historical costume drama is a mini-series on the life of Flemish first-rate Baroque painter Pieter Pauwel Rubens (1577-1640), whose artistic success throughout Europe not only made him a fortune allowing him to stock his Antwerp residence ('Rubenshuis' in Dutch) and a castle at Elewijt, in the countryside nearer Brussels, with numerous fashionable treasures, but also became an ennobled diplomat for the Spanish Hapsburg rulers of the Southern Low Countries (now Belgium), who often traveled, for painting commissions and/or diplomatic missions, to and worked in Italy, France, Spain, all Catholic powers, as well as protestant England and the United Provinces (mainly Holland), also allowing him to meet other prominent contemporaries such as artists. It further covers his marriages to Isabella Brandt and Hélène Fourment.

Short film.