Résumé
Résumé de Quatrevingt-treize
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
Readers who love big historical canvases, moral dilemmas and clashes of ideas will enjoy this book. It also suits anyone drawn to French history, Breton forests, and stories where mercy and duty collide.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Ninety-Three is the last novel of Victor Hugo, who died in 1885. It is set in 1793, the year of the Terror, when the French Republic fights foreign kings on its borders and a peasant rising in the west at home. Hugo takes the great quarrel of the age and shrinks it to three men and three children in the forests of Brittany.
The book gives you a stormy sea chase, a night in the streets and councils of Paris, and a siege in a ruined tower. Its people are a ruthless royalist marquis, a gentle young republican commander, and the priest who raised him and now holds the power of life and death. A mother searches for her stolen children across a country at war.
The tale opens in a dark wood, where a Paris battalion finds something it did not expect.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A battalion adopts three lost childrenFree
- 2A runaway cannon tests a ship
- 3Caught between a reef and a fleet
- 4Halmalo's vengeance and the old man's answer
- 5The beggar who hides the hunted lord
- 6Paris, the Convention and the three giants
- 7The Vendée and a clash at Dol
- 8Two republics and a tower under siege
- 9A night assault and the children at play
- 10What the fire and the ladder ask of three men
- 11Hugo's ideas on revolution and mercy
- 12How the story is told
Point clé 1 sur 12
A battalion adopts three lost children
In late May 1793 a Paris battalion called the Bonnet Rouge searches the forest of La Saudraie in Brittany. The war there is cruel. Of twelve thousand men sent from Paris, thousands are already dead. Thirty grenadiers and a canteen woman move ahead of the main force, hunting for an ambush.
They find a ragged young woman named Michelle Fléchard, sitting on the moss with a baby at her breast and two small boys asleep at her knees. The sergeant, Radoub, questions her. She does not know what Blues or Whites are. Her village burned, her husband was shot in a hedge three days ago, and her only answer to every question is that she is with her children.
The scene is simple, and Hugo makes it count. The woman is homeless and starving, yet she gives her bread to the children and keeps none for herself. Her family history is a list of what king, lord and priest have done to the poor.
Radoub sees the baby smile at him, and a tear rolls into his mustache. He proposes that the whole battalion adopt the three children. The grenadiers cheer for the Republic. The first book plants the thread that runs to the final pages: the children, their names, and the men who have promised to protect them.
The children are Georgette, the baby, and the boys René-Jean and Gros-Alain.
That’s 1 of 12 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Who’s who
- The Marquis de Lantenac
- A royalist commander and Gauvain’s great-uncle, he fights to restore the monarchy with courage and ruthless discipline.
- Gauvain
- Lantenac’s great-nephew and Cimourdain’s former pupil, he commands republican troops while believing justice must allow mercy.
- Cimourdain
- A former priest and Gauvain’s devoted mentor, he represents the revolutionary government and demands unwavering loyalty to the Republic.
- Michelle Fléchard
- A mother of three small children, she struggles to protect her family amid the fighting between royalists and republicans.
- The National Convention
- France’s revolutionary assembly debates the Republic’s future while its representatives direct the struggle against royalist forces.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 126,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 8 h 25 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 13 other languages
Questions about Quatrevingt-treize
What is Ninety-Three about?
It follows the year 1793 in Brittany, where a royalist marquis leads a revolt and his republican great-nephew and the priest who raised him hunt him. Three orphaned children and their mother stand at the centre of the conflict.
Is Ninety-Three a true story?
It is a novel set in a real time, the French Revolution and the Vendée war. Real figures such as Robespierre, Danton and Marat appear, but the main characters and the tower siege are Hugo's invention.
Who is Cimourdain?
Cimourdain is a former priest who becomes a stern revolutionary delegate. He once tutored Gauvain and loves him like a son, yet is sent to watch over him with power to punish any mercy to the enemy.
What does the title Ninety-Three mean?
It refers to 1793, the year of the Terror in France, when the Republic fought foreign armies and the Vendée uprising. Hugo treats it as a year of both great reforms and great cruelty.
What is the main message of the book?
Hugo argues that mercy and human feeling stand above rigid law and revolution. The book shows how innocence, in the form of three children, can change hardened men and test even the Republic's ideals.