Les Misérables Chapter 22 Summary

Summary

The centre of the barricade collapses under a final, successful assault after cannon fire creates an inclined breach. The attacking column surges through the hollow and the defenders who held the middle—Courfeyrac, Joly, Bossuet, Feuilly and Combeferre—retreat in confusion. Many of the insurgents, confronted by the muzzles of guns and the sudden prospect of death, try to flee and beat at the door of the six-story house that forms the barricade’s rear. The house’s door opens for an instant and then shuts, offering a possible refuge.

Enjolras and Marius stand at opposite ends of the barricade; Enjolras protects the retreating men and forces them through the one open entrance, holding the wine-shop door against the soldiers with a sword and rifle. Marius, struck and fainting from a broken collar bone, falls outside and feels himself captured just before a hand seizes him. Enjolras, seeing Marius absent, fears the same. Inside the wine-shop the defenders slam, bolt and chain the door while those without batter it with muskets and axes. Rumors among the troops—especially that prisoners are mutilated—fuel their ferocity.

Within the shop two bodies lie under a black cloth—Mabeuf and Gavroche—and Enjolras kisses the old man’s hand. The assault on the wine-shop becomes a desperate siege: paving-stones and shots rain from above, staircases are hewn, and when the door finally yields the attackers find the upper floor vaulted in and survivors firing through a ceiling breach. The last cartridges are used; the wounded clutch bottles of aquafortis as crude weapons. The combat devolves into an infernal struggle of blood and smoke, beyond ordinary description, where heroism turns monstrous and resistance becomes a vision of apocalyptic violence.

Key events

1. Cannon creates a breach and attackers make a final decisive assault
2. Centre defenders retreat; many try to reach the house behind the redoubt
3. Enjolras holds open the wine-shop door and shepherds insurgents inside
4. Door is barred, bolted and chained while soldiers batter it from outside
5. Rumors of mutilations enrage the troops and worsen the assault
6. Attackers force the door; fierce close-quarters slaughter follows
7. Besieged fire through a ceiling hole; last cartridges and bottles used as weapons

Analysis

This chapter compresses the transition from organized warfare to chaotic, close-quarters annihilation, emphasizing the collapse of collective resistance into desperate individual struggle. Structurally it marks the end of the barricade as a defensible public space and the movement into a claustrophobic interior (the Hucheloup wine-shop), shifting the novel’s palette from broad political theater to intimate carnage. Enjolras’s role crystallizes here: he is both protector and sacrificial leader, kissing Mabeuf’s hand to underline the human ties beneath revolutionary rhetoric. Marius’s fainting and fleeting thought of Cosette juxtapose personal love and political commitment, showing how private ties persist amid public catastrophe.

Hugo’s narrative technique heightens horror through accumulating detail—piled rubble, the five fingers glued to the post, the hole in the ceiling, bottles of aquafortis—which converts ordinary objects into instruments of war. Rumor functions as a motif: the soldiers’ belief in mutilations escalates violence and foreshadows further atrocity, demonstrating how misinformation can catalyze cruelty in civil conflict. Imagery leans toward the epic and the infernal (Milton, Dante), transforming human combat into mythic combat and interrogating the moral limits of heroism when survival overrides all other codes.

Important quotes

“Don’t advance!”

EnjolrasHe shouts to halt the soldiers so he can protect retreating insurgents and allow them to enter the house.

“There is but one door open; this one.”

EnjolrasEnjolras points out the single entrance and shields the men while making them pass into the wine-shop.

“Let us sell our lives dearly.”

EnjolrasAs the door is barricaded, Enjolras rallies the defenders to hold out with maximum resistance.

Characters in Chapter 22

• Enjolras
• Marius
• Courfeyrac
• Joly
• Bossuet
• Feuilly
• Combeferre
• Gavroche
• Mabeuf
• soldiers
• sappers
• an officer
• the artillery-sergeant