As touched on in the previous chapter, Kleist's 1808 drama Die Herrmannsschlacht is directly and principally concerned with the question of national liberation and the fight against French imperialism. In contrast to Die Verlobung in St. Domingo, the text is clearly determined for and by a specific moment of historical crisis: in a letter to Karl Freiherr von Steinzum Altenstein from January 1809, for instance, Kleist states that the play is “auf keinem … entfernten Standpunct gedichtet” and falls directly in “die Mitte der Zeit” (DKV, 4:426–27), while a month later he writes to Heinrich Joseph von Collin that this particular work is “mehr, als irgend ein anderes, für den Augenblick berechnet” (DKV, 4:429). Conceived as a response to the current political situation under Napoleonic occupation, the drama parallels Prussia's position with the historical precedent of the ancient Germans in their relation to the Roman Empire, invoking the account of Arminius the Cheruscan who, in AD 9, led a coalition of Germanic tribes to victory over Quinctilius Varus's Roman legions at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, thereby halting the relentless march of Roman conquest and securing liberty for the German people. Using the material provided by this foundational narrative, Kleist constructs a thinly veiled drame-à-clef through which he voices an appeal for cooperation against the imperial foe, and sketches a “scenario of conduct” demonstrating how a superior foreign military power might be repelled and defeated by smaller groups of less sophisticated combatants in a brutal, no-holds-barred war of total national defense.