The play takes place during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War. Its heroine, Raina (rah-EE-na) Petkoff, is a young Bulgarian woman engaged to Sergius Saranoff, one of the heroes of that war, whom she idolizes. One night, a Swiss mercenary soldier in the Serbian army, Captain Bluntschli, climbs in through her bedroom window and threatens to shoot Raina if she gives the alarm. When Russian/Bulgarian troops burst in to search the house for him, Raina hides him so that he won’t be killed. In a conversation after the soldiers have left, Bluntschli’s attitude towards war and soldiering (pragmatic and practical as opposed to Raina’s idealistic views) shock her, especially after he tells her that he does not carry pistol cartridges but chocolate. When the search dies down, Raina and her mother Catherine sneak Bluntschli out of the house, disguised in an old housecoat.