Page 2035 - les-miserables

own men killed and they are using up our ammunition for
nothing.’
Enjolras spoke like the real general of insurrection which
he was. Insurrection and repression do not fight with equal
weapons. Insurrection, which is speedily exhausted, has
only a certain number of shots to fire and a certain number
of combatants to expend. An empty cartridge-box, a man
killed, cannot be replaced. As repression has the army, it
does not count its men, and, as it has Vincennes, it does
not count its shots. Repression has as many regiments as
the barricade has men, and as many arsenals as the bar-
ricade has cartridge-boxes. Thus they are struggles of one
against a hundred, which always end in crushing the bar-
ricade; unless the revolution, uprising suddenly, flings into
the balance its flaming archangel’s sword. This does happen
sometimes. Then everything rises, the pavements begin to
seethe, popular redoubts abound. Paris quivers supremely,
the quid divinum is given forth, a 10th of August is in the
air, a 29th of July is in the air, a wonderful light appears, the
yawning maw of force draws back, and the army, that lion,
sees before it, erect and tranquil, that prophet, France.

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