The Trumpet Major was Thomas Hardy's seventh novel, published in 1880 in a censored version in the [I]Good Words[/I] magazine and as the full version by Smith, Elder. It is a historical story set in the Napoleonic Wars from the threatened invasion from Boulogne to the beginning of the Peninsular war, and deals with the relationships of three men and two women and how they are affected by their personalities. It is not as bleak as most of his work.