The advent of the new, expressive, relatively affordable keyboard instrument, the fortepiano and the growth in the interest in music in non-elite circles encouraged the fad for descriptive music in general and the battle piece in particular. Deemed unworthy of study by writers on music history, both at the time and now, written for a mostly female, 'unmusical', amateur musician, the fortepiano battle pieces of this period were so popular that they were still being performed at the end of the nineteenth. These political pieces were a ‘fait de société’, an expression of patriotism, and hugely influential, bringing the battle into the drawing room and beyond. This chapter charts the rise of the programmatic keyboard battle piece, with its specific (and novel) baggage of accompanying texts, in German speaking lands.