The Heroes — Les Misérables

All at once, the drum beat the charge. The attack was a hurricane. On the evening before, in the darkness, the barricade had been approached silently, as by a boa. Now, in broad daylight, rude force had been unmasked. The army hurled itself on the wall with the weight of a brazen beam. The wall held firm. The assault was so furious that for one moment it was inundated with assailants, but it shook off the soldiers as the lion shakes off the dogs. The column, forced to retreat, remained massed in the street and replied with a discharge like a bouquet of fireworks laid on its side, picking off dead men from its clusters of lightning. On both sides the resolution was equal. The street was strewn with corpses.

The barricade had Enjolras at one of its extremities and Marius at the other. Enjolras reserved and sheltered himself. Three soldiers fell under his embrasure without having even seen him. Marius fought unprotected. He made himself a target. He stood with more than half his body above the breastworks. There is no man more terrible in action than a dreamer. Marius was formidable and pensive. In battle he was as in a dream. The cartridges were giving out, but not the sarcasms. Courfeyrac was bareheaded. What have you done with your hat, Bossuet asked. They have finally taken it away from me with cannon-balls. Feuilly named the men who had promised to join them and who had abandoned them. Combeferre restricted himself to a grave smile. There are people who observe the rules of honour as one observes the stars, from a great distance. The interior was so strewn with torn cartridges that one would have said that there had been a snowstorm. The attacking column drew nearer, as the vice grasps the wine-press. Then there burst forth a battle worthy of a wall of Troy. These haggard, ragged, exhausted men, who had had nothing to eat for four and twenty hours, who had but a few more rounds to fire, became Titans. The barricade was ten times attacked, approached, assailed, scaled, and never captured. They were one against sixty.

Bossuet was killed. Feuilly was killed. Courfeyrac was killed. Combeferre, transfixed by three blows from a bayonet in the breast at the moment when he was lifting up a wounded soldier, had only time to cast a glance to heaven when he expired. Marius, still fighting, was so riddled with wounds, particularly in the head, that his countenance disappeared beneath the blood, and one would have said that his face was covered with a red kerchief. Enjolras alone was not struck. When he had no longer any weapon, an insurgent thrust some arm or other into his fist. All he had left was the stumps of four swords. In order to be superb, it is not necessary to wear a ducal helmet. It suffices to give one's life for a conviction or a loyalty. Take a raw recruit and a student, breathe upon them with a breath of duty, and let the one fight for his flag and the other for his ideal, and let both imagine that they are fighting for their country. The struggle will be colossal.