I was going to stay way out of this because I hate discourse, but man you are misinterpreting Enjolras so badly and he deserves so so much more.
Enjolras was not their leader. Canonically and historically, Les Amis was a very small group in a very large mass of secret societies. Even if Enjolras was the leader of just Les Amis, it was never his ultimate decision. They were all part of something much bigger (also you really think if Enjolras wasn’t their they wouldn’t have just found another group to fight with? Bahorel was going down swinging in EVERY universe). But Enjolras wasn’t even the leader of Les Amis. He was the chief, the one that a lot of the decision-making fell upon (because he was best for the job and most passionate about it 98% of the time), but he was never a leader. He even says so himself when Marius comes to the barricade. Even if others saw him as a leader, Enjolras did not. And we are given so many examples of this throughout the barricade chapters. He takes other peoples advice constantly, especially Combeferre’s. He is considered the chief because he was the most charismatic, most passionate, and most able to garnish results, but he was never technically a leader. This wasn’t a war, he wasn’t a general, this was a riot (in your own words) of the people, and Enjolras was just a person.
He literally encouraged people to leave when things went sour??? He was more than happy to give his life for the cause, but he never expected anybody else to.
The rebellion, both in the book and history, was not doomed from the start. There were so many factors that came into their loss, including the very unexpected brutality from the National Guard. Nobody expected the government to retaliate the way that they did, even historically where a lot of people DID survive the June Rebellion, the National Guard was criticized for the amount of violence they used. Also, judging by the turnout of people at Lamarque’s funeral (which was in the thousands or even tens of thousand, IIRC) who said they would fight, they were expecting a MUCH more even playing field. However, in the book especially, the people failed to back them up. Do you really think they would have gone through with it had they known they were only going to have like 60 men on their barricade? No. Also there were other factors that were either unexpected or miscalculated, including disruptions to ammunition supply lines and even perhaps weather. So no, they didn’t run in on a suicide mission, they genuinely believed they had a shot. And hey, under different circumstances it probably would of.
The boys weren’t new to battle. Even though it is not talked about in the book, it is extremely likely that most, if not all, of them participated in the Rebellion of 1830 which, all things considered, went pretty well for them. This just again re-iterates the fact that everyone did not think the June Rebellion was going to go as badly as it did. Even if Enjolras was forcefully leading them anywhere (which he certainly wasn’t), it’s not like they were expecting to die. Ready for it? Yes. But probably not expecting it.
Enjolras was soft as fuck. He refused to kill Javert with a knife, he didn’t want a little kid on the barricade, he let Courf and Bossuet joke around, he let Combeferre nerd out about artillery, his first reaction when Jehan was captured was ‘trade them for Javert’ (and PLEASE remember that thiings were going alright for them at this stage, and if they had of given Javert back he would have immediately told the National Guard every piece of intel he had. This is canonical proof that Enjolras put his friends before the rebellion), he shot a murder even though he hated it so his friends didn’t have to, he cried when he had to kill a fellow Parisian, he died holding Grantaire’s hand. Enjolras was soft and most, most importantly, Enjolras loved his friends. And that is what makes me so upset about your comment, that you think in any universe Enjolras would put the rebellion before his friends. He wouldn’t and he didn’t. He loved them so so so much, and if you think he wouldn’t have tried to save them if he could you are very wrong, and Enjolras deserves better,
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