Hugo is really good at writing battle scenes. This one is frantic and furious and touching all at once. Maybe my favorite moment was the nursing mother whose husband was beside her with a broken leg, “tranquilly” shooting in front of him.
The peasants don’t know how to use their cannons without officers to show them, exemplifying how aristocracy is stupid because it deprives a community of the intelligence of the majority of its members.
Gauvain is temporarily flummoxed by Lantenac’s forces barricading themselves in the old market building. He is standing outside a barricade and a cannon takes his hat off; he dreamily picks it up again. Welp. Way to dance on both my Gauvain feelings (apparently I have those now) and my Courfeyrac feelings there, Hugo. I can suddenly see why @amarguerite named her Courfeyrac Gauvain, apart from the Arthurian connection.
And Gauvain tricks Lantenac’s forces into thinking they’re outnumbered, with the help of only nineteen other men, including Radoub and the remnants of the Bonnet Rouge. I already loved the Bonnet Rouge. I am now in love with Gauvain. HE IS THE BEST and Hugo’s gonna kill him, isn’t he, he will decapitate Gauvain and then laugh about it afterwards.
Lantenac, observing all this with the detached air of Emperor Palpatine viewing the rebel attack from his perch in the Death Star, just thinks this reaffirms his worldview. Peasants are no good; he has to wait for the trained English troops. Hugo sort of agrees with Lantenac, though perhaps for different reason. Hugo says peasants catch fear the way thatch catches fire, and that’s why they panic and flee. The earlier bit about the peasants’ inability to use the cannons makes me think that Hugo blames Lantenac, and the aristocracy generally, for keeping the peasants servile, because that’s what makes them so scared and ready to lose their heads and flee.
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timeasmymeasure
3.2.3: Petites Armées et Grandes Batailles
Date: 2014-06-11 01:41 am (UTC)The peasants don’t know how to use their cannons without officers to show them, exemplifying how aristocracy is stupid because it deprives a community of the intelligence of the majority of its members.
Gauvain is temporarily flummoxed by Lantenac’s forces barricading themselves in the old market building. He is standing outside a barricade and a cannon takes his hat off; he dreamily picks it up again. Welp. Way to dance on both my Gauvain feelings (apparently I have those now) and my Courfeyrac feelings there, Hugo. I can suddenly see why @amarguerite named her Courfeyrac Gauvain, apart from the Arthurian connection.
And Gauvain tricks Lantenac’s forces into thinking they’re outnumbered, with the help of only nineteen other men, including Radoub and the remnants of the Bonnet Rouge. I already loved the Bonnet Rouge. I am now in love with Gauvain. HE IS THE BEST and Hugo’s gonna kill him, isn’t he, he will decapitate Gauvain and then laugh about it afterwards.
Lantenac, observing all this with the detached air of Emperor Palpatine viewing the rebel attack from his perch in the Death Star, just thinks this reaffirms his worldview. Peasants are no good; he has to wait for the trained English troops. Hugo sort of agrees with Lantenac, though perhaps for different reason. Hugo says peasants catch fear the way thatch catches fire, and that’s why they panic and flee. The earlier bit about the peasants’ inability to use the cannons makes me think that Hugo blames Lantenac, and the aristocracy generally, for keeping the peasants servile, because that’s what makes them so scared and ready to lose their heads and flee.