The play takes place during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War. Its heroine Raina Petkoff is a young Bulgarian woman engaged to Sergius Saranoff one of the heroes of that war whom she idolizes. On the night after the Battle of Slivnitza a Swiss mercenary soldier in the Serbian army Captain Bluntschli climbs in through her bedroom balcony window and threatens to shoot Raina if she gives the alarm.