Les Misérables, Book 1: The War Between Four Walls, Chapter 1 summary

What happens

1. The narrator argues that popular violence requires resistance but also respect for the suffering that produces it.
2. The Saint-Antoine barricade rises as a vast heap of wreckage, crowded with defenders and resistant to artillery.
3. The Temple barricade presents a silent, carefully aligned wall whose concealed defenders fire with deadly accuracy.
4. After three days of resistance, attackers enter through houses and rooftops, killing every Temple defender except Barthélemy.
5. The narrator contrasts Cournet’s forceful warmth with Barthélemy’s silence and connects each man to his barricade.
6. The account follows Barthélemy through imprisonment, his killing of Cournet in London, and execution by hanging.

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