Les Misérables Volume 5, Chapter 21 Summary

Summary

Day breaks on the barricade and the army launches a full, daylight assault with drums, trumpets, bayonets and sappers. The attackers advance in columns and repeatedly try to scale the barricade, but the insurgents, though few, wounded and nearly out of cartridges, hold their position. The narrative concentrates on the overwhelming roar and weight of the assault, describing the volley of musketry and the visual of interlacing flashes like a bouquet of fireworks bearing bullets.

Within the barricade, Enjolras commands an extremity with reserve and control while Marius fights openly at the other end as if in a trance; both occupy contrasting roles—Enjolras the composed leader, Marius the prodigal dreamer who exposes himself. The street becomes strewn with corpses; several named students and companions—Bossuet, Feuilly, Courfeyrac, Combeferre—fall in the course of the fighting. Combeferre dies after being bayoneted while aiding a wounded man. The barricade is repeatedly attacked and repelled: its construction and position allow a small band to hold off a much larger force. Hugo elevates the scene into epic terms, comparing the combat to legendary and classical exploits and arguing that ordinary young men, fired with duty and conviction, can produce heroism equal to that of legendary champions.

Key events

1. Dawn assault: army attacks barricade with drums, trumpets, sappers and bayonets.
2. Intense musketry and repeated attempts to scale the barricade; attackers keep pressing.
3. Enjolras holds one end of the barricade reservedly; Marius fights exposed at the other.
4. Several students and companions are killed: Bossuet, Feuilly, Courfeyrac, Combeferre.
5. Insurgents nearly out of cartridges and wounded, yet the barricade resists multiple assaults.
6. Narrator casts the struggle in epic mythic terms, equating modern youth’s sacrifice with heroic legend.

Analysis

This chapter transforms a tactical street battle into a moral and aesthetic demonstration of heroism. Hugo compresses visceral, cinematic detail—gunfire, bodies, shattered windows—into an extended meditation on courage, sacrifice and the contrast between public violence and private disposition. Enjolras and Marius serve as foils: Enjolras embodies disciplined, strategic leadership and reserve, whereas Marius exemplifies impassioned, prodigal self-exposure; both models of heroism complement each other and illuminate the novel’s recurring tension between idealism and action.

The narrative technique alternates vivid sensory description with lofty comparisons to epic and classical models, deliberately elevating the contemporary common soldier to the stature of mythic heroes (Homeric names and François I. are invoked). This rhetorical shift universalizes the students' sacrifice: ordinary men become Titans through conviction. Symbolically, the barricade functions as both physical defense and moral crucible where youth is purified into heroism. The repeated assaults and the barricade’s endurance underscore themes of resistance against overwhelming force and the tragic nobility of doomed steadfastness. Foreshadowing is subtle: the steady depletion of cartridges and the mounting deaths indicate a turning tide, while the catalogue of fallen comrades intensifies the moral stakes and emotional weight for characters who survive or witness the carnage.

Important quotes

“All at once, the drum beat the charge.”

NarratorOpens the scene: sudden transition from tense night to full-scale daytime assault.

“The barricade was ten times attacked, approached, assailed, scaled, and never captured.”

NarratorSummarizes the insurgents' repeated defensive success despite overwhelming odds.

“There is no more violent prodigal than the avaricious man who takes the bit in his teeth; there is no man more terrible in action than a dreamer.”

NarratorCharacterizes Marius' fierce, reckless courage and links dreaming/intensity to battlefield ferocity.

Characters in Volume 5, Chapter 21

• Enjolras
• Marius
• Courfeyrac
• Bossuet
• Feuilly
• Combeferre
• Corinthe
• François I.