Chapter 322 twenty two step by step

Only the captain Enjolras and Marius were left alive at the two ends of the barricade, and the middle, long held by Courfeyrac, Joly, Bossuet, Feuillet, and Combeferre, was no longer able to resist. up.Although the artillery fire did not blast a passable gap, it cut a rather large concave shape in the middle of the bastion.The top of the wall here has been knocked down by shells, and some of the falling rubble and rubble fell inwards, and some fell outwards, accumulating in piles, forming two slopes inside and outside the barrier, and the outer ones became favorable for attack. slope. A decisive assault was launched, which was successful.The soldiers rushed forward with a forest of bayonets, unstoppable; the dense battle ranks of the assault columns appeared in the fireworks on the top of the steep slope.

There was a vague desire to live in some people, and they didn't want to hang around in this hail of bullets.At this time, the instinct of self-preservation makes them howl, and people return to the state of animals again.They were forced to retreat in front of a seven-story building at the rear of the bastion.This home is a life saver.It was closed tightly from top to bottom, like a wall.There was ample time to open and close a door before the troops entered the bastion, a split second was enough.The door is suddenly ajar and then shuts immediately, and for these desperate people, this is life.Behind the house, there is a road to escape, open and unobstructed.They began beating on the door with gun butts, kicking at it, yelling and yelling, clapping their hands and begging, but no one came to open it.From the windows on the fourth floor, only the heads of dead men looked at them.

But Enjolras and Marius, with seven or eight others gathered around them, flew to their protection.Enjolras shouted to the soldiers: "Don't come near!" One officer refused and Enjolras killed him.At this moment, he was in the small backyard of the bastion, next to the house of Corinth, holding a sword in one hand and a gun in the other, and opened the door of the hotel to stop the attackers.He cried out to the desperate, "Only this door is open." Covering them with his body, he tackled a fighting battalion alone, letting them pass behind him.Everyone rushed in.Enjolras, brandishing his carbine, now functions as a cudgel, which the club-wielders call a "gauge rose," with which to thwart the bayonets around him and in front of him, and himself to enter the door last; In one terrible instant the soldiers will enter and the rebels will close the gates.The door was shut so violently that when it was closed tightly, five severed fingers of a soldier who had grasped the door frame could be seen sticking to the door frame.

Marius stayed outside, a bullet shattered his collarbone, and he fell dizzy.He closed his eyes at this point, but was also aware of a strong hand grasping him.The last remembrance of Cosette was haunting him, and he had just had time for the thought: "I am a prisoner, to be shot," and passed out. Enjolras thought the same thing when he did not see Marius among those who fled into the hotel.But at this moment man has only time to contemplate his own death.Enjolras bolted the door, put the bolt, turned the key twice in the lock, and locked the padlock, while there was a violent beating from outside, the soldiers with the butts of their rifles, the sappers with their axes.The attackers gathered in front of the gate and began to lay siege to the hotel.

The soldiers, so to speak, were full of rage. The death of the gunner enraged them, and to make matters worse, in the hours before the attack, tales circulated among the soldiers that the rebels had mutilated the captives, and there was said to be a headless soldier's body in the hotel.It was rumors of this sort, which were bound to bring misfortune, which so often accompanies civil wars, and which later gave rise to the events in Transno South Street. When the door was blocked, Enjolras said to the others: "We must make each other pay a high price for our death." Then he went to the long table where Mabeuf and Gavroche lay.Beneath the black cloth were two straight and rigid figures, one large and one small, with two faces faintly discernible under the folds of the cold shroud.A hand protruded from under the shroud and hung to the ground. It was the old man's hand.

Enjolras stooped and kissed that venerable hand, whose forehead he had kissed the night before. It was the only two kisses in his life. Let us briefly say that the battle of the barricades is like the battle of the gates of Thebes, and the battle of the hotel is equivalent to the street fighting of Zaragoza. This resistance is tenacious.There is no mercy for the loser, there is no possibility of negotiation, and people fight to the death.When Suchet said: "Surrender!" Palafox replied: "Spike after artillery." Everything was done when the hotel of Hucheroup was taken by surprise: paving stones rained from windows and roofs to blow the siege. Or, to make the soldiers furious with terrible casualties, there are guns fired from cellars and attics, there are violent attacks, there are violent resistances, and finally, after the door is breached, there is a frenzied extermination.The attackers rushed into the hotel, and the broken door panels that fell to the ground caught their feet, and they couldn't find a single soldier.The spiral staircase was chopped off by an ax and lay across the downstairs hall. Several wounded had just passed away, and all those who were not killed were on the second floor. From the hole in the ceiling of the stair passage, a violent blow was fired. fire.This is their last bullet.When the ammunition ran out and these dying warriors had no ammunition left, they each carried in their hands two bottles of Enjolras' reserve (which we mentioned earlier), and with this brittle and frighteningly thick stick they fought against the climbers. By.This is a bottle filled with water.We faithfully narrate this grisly carnage.The besieged, alas, turn everything into a weapon.Archimedes was not honored by the fire of Greece, nor Bayard by the boiling resin; all wars are terrible, and there is no choice.Although the machine gunners of the encircling army are somewhat inconvenient from the bottom up, their lethality is still considerable.The hole in the ceiling was soon surrounded by a circle of dead men's heads, with long streaks of blood flowing.Those noises are really indescribable; in the closed fire smoke, it is like fighting in the night, and it has reached a level of horror that cannot be described in words.This struggle in hell is no longer human, it is no longer a giant against a big man, it is like Milton and Dante, not like Homer.Demons are attacking, ghosts are resisting.

This is brutal heroism.