Chapter 321 twenty one heroes

The drums of surprise attack sounded. Hurricane onslaught.Last night in the darkness, the barricade seemed to be approached stealthily by a boa constrictor.Now, in broad daylight, in the open street, a surprise attack was certainly out of the question; moreover, the strength of the troops had been exposed.The cannons were roaring, and the troops charged on the barricades.Fury is now a sublime ability.A formidable infantry troop in line of battle, evenly spaced at a considerable distance between the National Guard and the Security Police, backed up by innumerable people who could hear and see, rushed towards the street, beating them. The drums were raised, the bugles were blown, the bayonets were leveled, and the sappers opened the way, advancing calmly through the hail of bullets, reaching the barricades, and pressing their weight on a wall like a copper pillar.

The wall held up. The insurgents opened fire fiercely.The barricade, on which men are climbing, has a tuft of fire scattered like a mane.The attack was so violent that for a moment there were assailants all around; like a lion against a pack of dogs, the barricade, freed from these soldiers, was covered by the besiegers, but like waves crashing on a cliff, a moment later, a huge black mass appeared again. cliff. After being forced to retreat, the columns crowded the streets again, they had no cover, but they were terrible, and they fired back at the bastion with terrible volleys.Those who have seen fireworks will remember the intersecting flares known as fireworks, and imagine the clusters not vertically but horizontally, with each cluster tipped with a shot, a slug, or a shot , sowing death in a succession of lightning and thunder.The barricade is just below it.

The determination of both parties is equal.Bravery here borders on barbarism, mixed with a certain brutal heroism, which springs above all from the spirit of self-sacrifice.In those days the National Guard fought like light infantry.The army wants to end the war, but the rebels want to keep fighting.To accept death while young and strong drives the dauntless to madness.Everyone in the scrimmage felt the image of supremacy bestowed by the final moments.The streets were littered with dead bodies. At one end of the barricade was Enjolras, at the other Marius.Enjolras was concerned about the whole barricade, he waited for the opportunity to take cover, and the three soldiers fell one after another in front of his gun holes without seeing him.Marius fought without cover and became the target of public criticism.Most of his body was exposed from the top of the bastion.A stingy man can spend a fortune in madness, but nothing is more terrible in action than a meditator.Marius was both terribly frightening and brooding.His movements in battle are dream-like, and it looks as if a ghost is firing a gun.

The bullets of the besieged are running out, but their taunts are not.In the whirlwind of this tomb, they still laughed and laughed. Courfeyrac bareheaded. "Where have you got your hat?" Bossuet asked him. Courfeyrac replied: "They're always firing off." Or they make a haughty comment. "I don't understand these people," cried Feutsin sourly (he read names, some even famous, some from the military past), "who promised to come and swear to help us, who honored Guaranteed, they are our generals, but they have abandoned us!" Combeferre only responded with a solemn smile:

"There are people who abide by the code of honor, like people who observe the stars, from a long distance." The interior of the barricades was strewn with exploding shrapnel like a snowfall. The attackers were numerous and the insurgents were well positioned.From a high wall, the insurgents took aim at soldiers who staggered among the dead and wounded or stumbled on a steep slope.It is admirable that the barricade is so solidly erected, that it is worthy of a strong position, and that a few men can hold back an army.However, the assault column, which is constantly replenishing personnel and constantly reinforcing under the hail of bullets, is relentlessly approaching. Now it is advancing little by little, step by step, but surely, like the screws of a press machine being tightened, the army is gradually approaching the barricade.

As the assaults continued, the terror intensified. And so on this pile of paving stones, on this Machang Street, a struggle comparable to the battle of Troy took place.These emaciated, ragged, exhausted men, who had not eaten or closed their eyes for fourteen hours and had only a few rounds left to fire, were now feeling for empty pockets; almost all of them had been wounded, head or The arms were all bandaged with blackened and blood-stained cloth strips, and blood flowed from the holes in the clothes. Some of the weapons were just broken guns and old and blunt knives, but they were about to become giant titans.Ten times the barricade was besieged, stormed, climbed, but never captured.

To get an idea of ​​the battle, we can imagine setting fire to a group of fearsome warriors, and watch the fire again.This is not a battle, this is the hearth of a furnace.Their mouths were spitting fire, and their faces were strange.It was no longer in human form; the warriors were covered with fire; and it was frightening to see these fiery snakes going and going in the red flames of melee.We shall not describe the simultaneous and continuous scenes of mass killing on both sides, since only a long heroic epic has the right to describe a battle in twelve thousand lines. It is like the hell of Brahmanism, the most terrible of the seventeen kinds of hell, which is called the forest of swords in the Vedas.

Hand-to-hand combat began, hand to hand, shooting with pistols, slashing with long knives, punching with fists, from a distance, near, from above, from below, everywhere, from the roof, from the hotel window, several people got into the basement, from the ventilation hole shooting.This is a disparity between a pair of sixty.The facade of Corinth is half ruined and in ugly shape.The window was bullet-ridden, with no glass or frame left, just a misshapen hole blocked up haphazardly with paving stones.Bossuet was slain, Feuilly was slain, Courfeyrac was slain, Jolye was slain, Combeferre was stabbed three times with a bayonet while raising a wounded soldier, and pierced He slapped his chest, and just glanced up at the sky before dying of anger.

Marius went on fighting, wounded all over, especially on the head, and his face was covered with blood, as if covered with a red handkerchief. Enjolras was the only one unhurt.Without a weapon, he stretched out his hands left and right, and an insurgent randomly put a knife in his hand.Only fragments remain of his four swords, one more than Francis I had at Marijano. Homer says: "Diomedes slew Asile, son of Tetranes, who dwelt in happy Arespa; Beidaxis, the son of Oss, Essip, and Ababalai, the river-god, and the unimpeachable Buccorio; Apelai; Polypotes overthrows Astier; Polydamas overthrows Odos of Zeeland; Teucer overthrows Aedaion. Megantius dies at the javelin of Eurybile Bottom. Agamemnon, king of heroes, overthrew Elados, who grew up in the precipice-city watered by the billowing Chartoise." In our ancient heroic epic Esbrandian Attacking the giant Marquis of Swantipoor with two flaming knives, the Marquis pulled up the tower and threw himself at the knight to defend himself.In our ancient frescoes we can see two armed dukes of Brittany and Bourbon with coat of arms and helmets, riding horses, holding tomahawks, wearing iron masks, iron boots, wearing Iron gauntlets, one horse in ermine, the other in blue cloth; the Breton one had his lion between the horns of his crown, the Bourbon one in iron A large lily is adorned on the visor of the helmet.In fact, to show grandeur, it is not necessary to wear the high helmet of the duke like Yvonne, to carry a torch like Esbrandian, or to walk from Ephilia like Phyllis, the father of Polydamas. I brought back King Offiter's gift--a good armor, and it is enough to die for a faith or for allegiance.This innocent little soldier, who yesterday was a peasant in Beaus or Limoges, with a kitchen knife pinned to his waist, prowls around the nursery of the children in the Luxembourg Gardens, this young student, pale, absorbed in dissecting or reading a book, a The fair-haired boy who cut his beard with scissors, gathered the two of them together, preached to them a sense of responsibility, brought them to the corner of the Rue Bushra or stood face to face in the dead end of Blanche-Mibres, and made a man for himself. flag, another for ideals, so that both sides will think that they are fighting for their country; the struggle will be fierce, and these two opposing infantrymen and surgeons, their shadows on the great battlefield of human struggle can be compared with The shadow cast by the tigerish Lisi king Megaraes in hand-to-hand combat with the great god-equal Ajax is comparable.