During the Thirty Years' War, Christine, an orphan, falls in love with the colonel Count Merian. In order to always be with him, she puts on men's clothes, becomes a troop boy and later even a cornet - only the sutler knows her secret. Little by little, Christine realizes that the man she loves has been brutalized by the war and is no longer capable of true feelings. When she gives herself to him instead of a peasant maid, she is horrified by his brutality. She shoots him in a duel. She is sentenced to death as a cornet, but acquitted as a woman.