French National Guard

The French National Guard is a volunteer service of able-bodied men called up when danger within the nation requires a response. In Les Misérables, its role is defined less through institutional detail than through the pressures surrounding it: it helps defend the established state, appears among the forces confronting the June 1832 insurgents, and becomes part of Hugo’s argument that political order cannot substitute for social justice.

Nature and Function

The National Guard is described as a service of volunteers in which able-bodied men served and could be mobilized when an internal threat endangered the nation. The account supplies no broader organizational structure, but makes its civic and military function clear: it was a force available to the state in moments of domestic danger.

The June 1832 Barricades

During the uprising in Paris on June 5, 1832, the National Guard was among the armed forces facing the insurgents at the barricades. The insurgents were a small group confronting government forces; as the lull in fighting lengthened, the men at the barricade understood that the government was gathering strength. In this unequal confrontation, National Guardsmen and soldiers repeatedly took aim at Gavroche as he darted through the fire to collect cartridges. Their shots initially missed, and the boy answered the volleys with songs and gestures while continuing his dangerous task. The narrative does not identify which force fired the fatal shot, but the exchange places the National Guard within the armed pressure that ultimately reached him.

The force’s uniforms also become a practical means of escape. After guardsmen’s uniforms are taken from the dead, there are only four for five men. The shortage makes the insurgents’ desperate circumstances tangible: the disguises are intended to let married men and fathers cross enemy lines and leave the barricade, but one man cannot be equipped. The National Guard thus figures not only as an opposing force but through the uniforms its dead leave behind, now repurposed by those trying to survive.

State Authority and Social Responsibility

In an address to the Legislative Assembly, Hugo recognizes the National Guard’s part, alongside the army and the country’s other forces, in restoring a shaken state. He credits these forces with protecting the legal government, institutions, public peace, and civilization. Yet the speech immediately limits the meaning of that achievement: the restoration of material order, he argues, accomplishes nothing without a strengthened moral order.

Hugo’s criticism turns from the forces that have defended society to the suffering that remains within it. Order is incomplete while workers can lack bread, the elderly lack shelter, and families are left without effective assistance. The National Guard therefore stands within a political tension rather than receiving an uncomplicated celebration: it can help preserve the state, but the state’s security cannot count as a sufficient success while social misery continues to feed despair and conflict.