Far from the Madding Crowd Boldwood, not realising the valentine was a jest, becomes obsessed with Bathsheba and soon proposes marriage. Although she does not love him, she toys with the idea of accepting his offer; he is, after all, the most eligible bachelor in the district. However, she postpones giving him a definite answer. When Gabriel rebukes her for her thoughtlessness regarding Boldwood, she dismisses him. When Bathsheba's sheep begin dying from bloat, she discovers to her chagrin that Gabriel is the only man who knows how to cure them. Her pride delays the inevitable, but finally she is forced to beg him for
The Trumpet-Major about the possibility of invasion by Napoleon. Of the two brothers, John fights with Wellington in the Peninsular War, and Bob serves with Nelson at Trafalgar. The Napoleonic Wars was a setting that Hardy would use again in his play, "The Dynasts", and it borrows from the same source material. Edward Neill has called the novel an attempt to repeat the success of his earlier work "Far from the Madding Crowd" (1874), after the limited success of his intervening works. It’s 1804 and England expects an invasion attempt by Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies. Near Budmouth (Weymouth) Anne Garland lives with her