1.2.3-Robertawickham

1.2.3: Noblesse et Roture Mêlées
Wow, the counterrevolutionaries are despicable here. Not only are they dripping with disdain for anyone who’s not an aristocrat, they’re also willing to praise atrocities against anyone who tries to wiggle out from under their thumb. The only grudging compliment they have for the barber who’s fighting on their side is that he massacred three hundred revolutionaries after forcing them to dig their own graves. This is worse than snobbery, it’s the belief that they have the right to kill anyone who defies them. Snobbery is there too, though: they think there’s no way these peasants can make good soldiers. Which means that any military defeat of the aristocrats by the peasants is going to have a powerful ideological effect, as well as a practical one.

One thing that keeps coming up in their conversation is that they can’t show mercy, that mercy will be suicidal for them. This contrasts with the republicans’ compassionate behavior to Michelle Fléchard earlier on (and you can say they were patronizing her, you can even call their attitude imperialistic in a way, but it’s light years better than how La Vieuville and Boisberthelot would treat her). But it seems obvious that the contrast won’t be so simple later in the book, that the republicans will have to grapple with the tension between mercy and pragmatism.

Also: Joly! A republican Joly whose royalist father shot him in the head. Our Joly from Les Mis is 23 in 1828, so he was born in 1805, so his father can’t be the republican Joly here, but it could be an uncle or some other relative. If I’m remembering right, AMarguerite had a reference to this stealth crossover in some story of hers.