Last Instructions Pg.3

Page 1
Page 2

(Enjolras) gave his last instructions in the lower room in a quick but profoundly calm voice; Feuilly listened, and answered for the rest of them.
"Second floor, keep your axes ready to cut the stair case. Do you have them?"
"Yes," said Feuilly.
"How many?"
"Two axes and a poleaxe."
"Good. There are twenty-six of us left on our feet. How many muskets are there?"
"Thirty-four."
"Eight extra. Keep those eight muskets loaded like the rest, and at hand. Swords and pistols in your belts. Twenty men to the barricade. Six in ambush at the dormer windows and at the second-story window to fire down on the assailants through the loopholes in the paving stones. There can't be a single wasted movement here. The moment the drum beats the charge, the twenty downstairs must rush to the barricade. The first there will get the best places."

- from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

Seeing how the final moments on the barricade were more or less a reverse of Enjolras' last instructions, I thought it might be fun to draw it as such. [Except for the last page, which pretty much sums up their collective deaths.] A couple of things have been paraphrased/shifted around/taken from more than one translation/added/deleted, also because it seemed like a good idea at the time. (And no, there were no actual shouts of "Murderers! mutilators!" from the soldiers, but there *was* the following paragraph

The death of the artillery sergeant had angered them [the soldiers]; and then, a more deadly thing, during the few hours preceding the attack, it had been heard among them that the insurgents mutilated prisoners, and that in the bistro there was the body of a headless soldier. This sort of unfortunate rumour is the ordinary accompaniment of civil wars, and it was a false report of this kind that later caused the catastrophe of the Rue Transnonain.

Also, the two unreadable speech bubbles in the first panel of page 2 were never meant to be read.

Just in case anyone wants to play Spot The Ami, here’s a tally of how many panels each one appears in:

• Combeferre: 5
• Courfeyrac: 4
• Enjolras: 4
• Feuilly: 3
• Joly: 3
• Bossuet: 1

Originally posted to Tumblr on 11 April '13.