Good soldier Jakob expect the promised pay o top of glory after a victorious war, but king Karl gives only his standard speech and worthless medals. returning home wounded and penniless, Jacob passes out trying to boil his wrecked shoes in the forest. he's spotted by the witch, who seduces him as a foxy woman and, as he smells a rat and seeks to run, tricks him as last favor to fetch from her well an ever-shining blue lamp. Not gullible enough to hand it over first, he's dropped down, but finds lightening the lamp awakes a stylish European equivalent of a jinn, Lampman, who can give him anything. Seeking revenge, he demands Karl's most prized possession. Initially displeased with the crown princess Augustine, promised in marriage to seal a warlike dynastic alliance, Jacob and she soon fall in love. Their plans to liberate her gets Jacob on the gallows at her arranged wedding day with warrior prince Philipp, the only hope being the lamp which only thieving beggar knave Johann, which he spared arrest, knows enough about.