Les Miserables -- Victor Hugo and the French Revolution. Episode 7 (1 of 8).

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It’s 1848 and there is yet another violent transfer of power going on in France.  One of its greatest citizens – both a member of the legislative body and the Legion of Honor, has been in hiding for 9 days with a price on his head.  If he’s found by the wrong people he will surely be killed.  He is an author and he does have a pile of manuscripts he’s working on, but first he’s got to get out of France.  How did he do it?  Was he the hero who saved the manuscript that would become the most famous French novel, or was it someone else?  How was the manuscript saved?

The story did get out and did get published and is considered the quintessential story of the French revolution.  But the central event on the barricades isn’t about the big French revolution in 1789 or even later events in the mid-1800s where Hugo himself was ON the barricades.  In fact, the 2 days on the barricades that consume almost a fifth of the whole book had almost no military significance at all.  Why did Hugo center on this event for inspiration instead of the much more significant revolution of the 1790s or the much more consequential events that Hugo himself was a part of?  Where is the revolution in this, the most famous fictional account of the French revolution?

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