Les Misérables Volume 5, Chapter 12 Summary

Summary

The chapter opens with a brief exchange between Bossuet and Combeferre and then broadens into a reflection on the character of the National Guard from the suburbs during the June 1832 days. The narrator describes this Guard as brave but capricious: men of bourgeois interests who defend shops, counting-houses, and private notions of order with fierce enthusiasm. Civic pride and private interest fuse; people take up arms "for an idea" or to protect a small piece of property, and this mixture of governmental zeal and individual initiative produces a kind of sanctioned anarchy. Small captains and citizens repeatedly act on their own authority, improvising assaults and tribunals in moments of panic and conviction.

Hugo then gives concrete examples of the deadly consequences of that improvisation. He recalls incidents of mistaken identity and summary executions—such as a poet nearly killed because a book title is misread—and then focuses on Captain Fannicot’s reckless assault on a barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie on 6 June 1832. Fannicot, impatient with his commanders, leads his company forward prematurely. The attack is poorly planned and devastatingly costly: several are mown down, the company is caught between two fires and the battery, and Fannicot himself dies when the cannon fires by order. The episode illustrates how the so-called army of order can destroy its own through rash initiative. Enjolras reacts with anger and strategic insight, lamenting that these improvised attacks waste men and ammunition and reveal the structural imbalance between a disciplined repression with unlimited resources and an insurgency with scarce shots and lives to expend. The chapter closes by contrasting that imbalance with the rare, transformative instances when an uprising surges and becomes irresistible, invoking memories of great revolutionary days.

Key events

1. Bossuet murmurs to Combeferre; Combeferre replies about men who do good by gun-shots
2. Narrator describes suburban National Guard’s zealous, bourgeois defense of order
3. Examples of mistaken lynchings and summary justice (poet Paul Aimé Garnier incident)
4. Account of Captain Fannicot’s unauthorized assault on the Rue de la Chanvrerie barricade
5. Fannicot’s company is repulsed, suffers heavy casualties, and Fannicot is killed by cannon
6. Enjolras criticizes the National Guard’s rashness and reflects on the imbalance between repression and insurrection

Analysis

This chapter functions as thematic exposition and a case study: it explores how private interests and civic zeal combine to produce violent, improvised enforcement of "order." Hugo uses a series of anecdotes and one detailed military episode to show that repression is not monolithic discipline but often disorganized, fanatical, and self-defeating. The Fannicot episode concretizes the narrator’s abstract claims: the Guard’s bravery becomes tragic when untethered to strategy. The contrast between the Guard’s expendability and the insurgents’ scarcity of men and ammunition emphasizes one of the novel’s recurring structural tensions—material imbalance between State force and popular revolt. Enjolras’s measured outrage positions him as the insurgent leader who understands both ethical and tactical stakes. Narrative technique shifts between ironic commentary, social diagnosis, and battlefield reportage; this variety keeps the reader at once analytic and emotional distance from events. Symbolically, the mistaken readings (Saint-Simon misread as Saint-Simonian) and the private captains who "save society" underscore Hugo’s critique of self-appointed righteousness: order maintained by caprice is fragile and culpable. The chapter foreshadows later reckonings between improvisation and strategy while reinforcing the moral complexity of those who fight "for order."

Important quotes

“He is a man who does good by gun-shots,”

CombeferreCombeferre’s wry appraisal of the kind of bourgeois zeal that characterizes many National Guard members.

“This attack, which was more furious than serious, irritated Enjolras.—“The fools!” said he.”

Narrator / EnjolrasEnjolras reacts to Captain Fannicot’s premature assault, criticizing its wastefulness and lack of strategy.

“Insurrection and repression do not fight with equal weapons.”

NarratorA thematic statement explaining the structural imbalance between resource-rich repression and resource-poor insurgency.

Characters in Volume 5, Chapter 12

• Bossuet
• Combeferre
• Jean Prouvaire
• Paul Aimé Garnier
• Captain Fannicot
• Enjolras