Schiller is Germany’s most celebrated classical playwright and indeed rates as one of the more influential playwrights in Western history. Wallenstein, an exploration of a flawed general’s struggle to bring and end to war against the will of his civil superiors, is considered his masterpiece. Schiller’s dramas generally deal with  attempts to overcome the constraints to human freedom imposed by fate, weakness of character, or impersonal forces of history.

Second Trooper: Ask and be told, what I say is no boast,    From Bavaria’s heights to the North Sea coast,    Everywhere we have left our trail,    Generation will tell the tale    For a hundred years and a hundred more    Of Holk and his men and their deeds in this war.

Sergeant-Major: Ah, there we have it!    Riot and plunder.    Does that make a soldier? No, by thunder!    Discipline makes him, style and address,    Smartness, importance, a look of finesse.

First Trooper: It’s freedom that makes him!    Can anyone doubt it?    I’ll mince no more words with you about it – When I served Gustavus, that miserable Swede!    His camp was more like a chapel, indeed, … So I crossed to the Catholic side,    For Magdeburg they were preparing to ride,    That was a different kettle of fish,    Everything there was just as you wish,    Gaming and booze and girls by the dozen!    I tell you, that was first-class dish,    For Tilly knew all about commanding,   … But destiny he couldn’t master – the battle of Leipzig was a disaster, and after that our fortune’s stuck,    Whatever we did, we met with bad luck.    We had to scrounge from place to place,    It seemed our name had become a disgrace.    And so I took the Saxon schilling    To see if that would make fortune more willing.

Sergeant-Major:    Why then, you did the best that you could!    The sack of Bohemia –

First Trooper:    That was no good.    Strict discipline we had to keep,    the harvest of war was not ours to reap….   When just at that moment we heard far and wide    That Friedland [Wallenstein was the duke of Friedland] was drawing recruits to his side.

Sergeant-Major:  And how long this time do you think you will stand?

First Trooper:    Joking apart, while he’s in command,    I’ll not think of deserting, upon my soul!     Can there be a better place to enrol?   Everything goes with a martial swing,    There’s style and grandeur in everything.    The spirit that moves in this uniform    Sweeps all before it like a storm,    Even the lowest underling.    Then in my step I feel a new spring,    Stride over the citizens, fearless and bold,    Like the general over the princes’ heads.    It’s just as in the day of old,    When it was only the sword that told;    When there was only one crime in the land,    To disobey the word of command!    There’s perfect freedom where no law impedes,    No questions are asked or confessions or creeds,    There’s only one difference that anyone heeds:    Do you belong to the army or no?    And it’s to that flag my allegiance I owe.

Sergeant-Major:    That’s the style, trooper! Why, now I hear you speak like a Friedlander cavalier!