The real tragedy about the barricade is that we donât know how much is true. Victor Hugo was there at the June Rebellion, so what is fact and what is fiction? That question gives me chills because weâll never know.Â
Charles Jeanne (who I think is probably actual real life Enjolras) wrote an in-detail account of the ACTUAL barricades in a letter to his sister after the fact
you can read it, tenlittlebullets translated it into English :)
itâs really graphic, he leaves no gory details out, just FYI if youâre gonna read it, keep TW: VIOLENCEÂ in mind
#how is he real-life enjolras if he survived (via metellus-cimber)
Iâm so glad somebody asked this, because the answer is: when they finally ran out of ammunition, Charles Jeanne rounded up everyone who was still standing, went, âlook, if weâre going to die, we might as well die fighting,â and led a suicidal ten-man charge against an entire flippinâ infantry column, armed with nothing but bayonets. The first few ranks of soldiers were so unprepared for such a spectacularly insane attack that they were too surprised to shoot. They crossed bayonets and tried to hold the insurgents off in hand-to-hand combat, but Jeanneâs swordsmanship was apparently aces, because he held off a bunch of them at once and covered his friends as they tried to breach the ranks. And once they were in, nobody could shoot them for fear of taking out their own guys.
So the last stand that the insurgents had intended as a noble suicide ended in them breaking through the ranks entirely and winding up in the next street over, outside the combat zone, going âwell shit, what do we do now?â (Iâm guessing the infantry column wasnât very deep; central Paris at that point was a rabbit warren of narrow twisty streets, and assembling troops en masse for an organized attack was a logistical nightmare.) Unlike the National Guard, the army werenât total chumps and got themselves turned around to give chase and start shooting once they werenât at risk of friendly fire any longer⌠and thatâs when all the civilians holed up in their houses went âno way, youâre not getting your hands on these crazy bastardsâ and started hurling furniture and crockery down on the soldiersâ heads. Jeanne was understandably distracted at the time, but afterwards somebody informed him that the barrage of unlikely projectiles included a piano. A piano. That is some straight-up Looney Tunes slapstick right there. No wonder Hugo went for the heroic death scene instead; if heâd stuck to real life, he probably wouldâve gotten complaints that heâd wrecked his readersâ suspension of disbelief.
Anyway, someone opened an alley gate for them to shelter in and take stock of the casualtiesâmost of them survived(!!!), but a few were pretty nastily wounded. Their host then had to lock Charles Jeanne in to keep him from charging right back out and taking on the whole goddamn army singlehanded. He probably wouldâve broken down the door if the poor man hadnât pointed out that going back out would give away his wounded comradesâ hiding place and the identities of the people sheltering them. They sat there listening to the gunfire gradually slow and go silent, and then in the middle of the night the ones who could still walk were allowed to slip away one by one at long intervals from each other. Charles Jeanne went straight home, slept like the dead for a few hours, was woken up at five in the morning with a warning that heâd been denounced and the building was surrounded, and then slipped out in disguise and managed to evade the police for four months before a former comrade ratted him out and he was arrested.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why Charles Jeanneâs letter is an absolute treasure that deserves to be available to anyone in Les Mis fandom who wants to read it. Incidentally, âhow Actual Historical Enjolras survived the barricades by being too good at his suicide missionâ is also one of the stories I tell when anyone asks me what the hell is so interesting about researching people nobodyâs ever heard of from an obscure chapter of French history.Â
Bringing this back for Barricade Day! To answer a few questions that keep coming up in the reblogs: hereâs my translation of Jeanneâs letter, which was my main source. Jeanne stood trial, was imprisoned instead of executed (because can you imagine what a martyr he wouldâve made), and died of tuberculosis just a few years later. Despite his improbable survival story, the RL June Rebellion was not an everybody-lives AUâlike the revolt in Les Mis, it ended in a hard-fought retreat into one of the buildings on the street, followed by a massacre. The guys who led a suicide charge and accidentally won were, unfortunately, the exception.
