Police officers clash with demonstrators in Lyon, central France. Photo / AP
Police officers clash with demonstrators in Lyon, central France. Photo / AP
The mounted officers advanced behind ranks of police on foot holding up their shields like Roman legionaries.
In front of them, on the fashionable Rue de Bretagne in central Paris, were the "yellow-vest" protesters and masked, black-clad youths, sending shoppers and patrons of pavement cafés scurrying indoors for cover.
"Noone was expecting trouble in this area," Françoise Perrin, 43, an observer.
Perrin, one of dozens of Parisians and tourists in the historic Marais district caught between a mob of protesters and riot police on horseback, added: "We were just about to order a drink, then we looked up and saw what looked like a military formation heading towards us. Then we looked the other way, and saw the protesters. We got the fright of our lives."
The police managed to prevent the mob from looting shops, smashing windows or attacking parked cars, pursuing them through the narrow medieval streets of one of Paris's oldest and most picturesque quarters.
A demonstrator plays a drum amongst the crowds of yellow-vested protesters in Paris. Photo / AP
But other parts of Paris were severely battered by clashes. An estimated 10,000 demonstrators marched through the streets on a "day of rage" as the authority of Emmanuel Macron, the President, was challenged by a fourth consecutive weekend of protests across France.
There were an estimated 125,000 protesters across France, with 1385 arrests - a record for a single day in postwar France. More than 700 were detained in Paris alone. At least 135 people were injured, including three police officers.
Demonstrators slow down the traffic on the motorway in Villefranche sur Saone, near Lyon, central France. Photo / AP
The emblematic Parisian avenue, the Champs-Elysées, was shrouded in tear gas and echoed to the sound of stun grenades as police battled a crowd of more than 1000, who sang the Marseillaise and chanted "Macron resign".
Police demolished burning barricades with armoured vehicles, deployed for the first time in the heart of Paris. Officers fired repeated salvoes of tear gas and water cannon to drive back and disperse protesters. But they regrouped and moved on, sometimes returning to confront the police minutes later.
A ring of steel surrounded the President's Elysee Palace - a key destination for the protesters - as police stationed trucks and reinforced metal barriers throughout the neighbourhood.
People run away from a burning car during clashes in Marseille, southern France. Photo / AP
Stores along the Champs-Elysees Avenue and the Avenue Montaigne boarded up their windows as if bracing for a hurricane but the storm struck anyway, this time at the height of the holiday shopping season. Protesters ripped off the plywood protecting the windows and threw flares and other projectiles.
The yellow vest crowd was overwhelmingly male, a mix of those bringing their financial grievances to Paris and groups of experienced vandals.
Police and protesters also clashed in other French cities, notably Marseille, Toulouse and Bordeaux, and in neighbouring Belgium.
The French Government's plan was to prevent a repeat of the rioting that damaged the Arc de Triomphe, devastated central Paris and tarnished the country's global image. It did not succeed, even though it was better prepared.
Toughening security tactics, French authorities deployed 8000 security officers in the capital alone, among the 89,000 who fanned out around the country.
Police officers clash with demonstrators in Lyon, central France. Photo / AP
A Starbucks near the Champs-Elysees was smashed wide open and people were seen stepping over broken glass and serving themselves to beverages. The window of a nearby bank was smashed in with a wrought-iron decoration used to encircle city tree trunks.
Amid the melee, Macron remained invisible and silent, as he has for the four weeks of a movement that started as a protest against a fuel tax hike and metamorphosed into a rebellion against high taxes and eroding living standards. Macron announced he would address the nation on television tomorrow.
An armored military vehicle drives down the Champs-Elysees avenue after clashes in Paris last weekend. Photo / AP
'Like a dog off its leash'
The founder of France's "gilets jaunes" revolt says it has become a dangerous "dog without a leash" and is prey to being hijacked by extremists and anarchists.
Jacline Mouraud, 51, is urging moderate protesters to open a dialogue with the French Government.
Mouraud, a composer and hypnotherapist from Brittany, is credited with sparking the movement after six million people viewed her Facebook video diatribe against environmental duties on petrol and diesel last month.
"What are you doing with the money apart from buying new dishes at the Élysée Palace and building yourself swimming pools?" she asked President Emmanuel Macron.
But she said yesterday that the movement had now been hijacked by an increasingly violent fringe of "extremists and anarchists".
Moraud, said: "This movement has broken free of everyone. You can't reason with people any more ... It's as if we had kept the dog on a leash and today the leash has snapped."
