France lit up on Saturday. A nationwide day of protest over the cost of living turned into the country’s most violent unrest in years, with town halls burning, luxury stores looted and riot police fighting running battles in city after city.
The interior ministry counted 550,000 people in the streets across some 140 towns and cities, including 110,000 in Paris. Organizers put the number at 800,000. Students who have spent weeks protesting conditions in schools marched alongside unions and the yellow vests, the movement that shook France eight years ago over fuel prices.
By nightfall the marches gave way to masked groups hurling paving stones and fireworks at police, who answered with tear gas and water cannon. In Limoges, the historic town hall was largely lost to a fire set during the clashes. The tourist office in Lyon was torched. In Marseille, protesters broke into city hall and toppled a bust of Marianne, the symbol of the French republic.
On the Champs-Élysées in Paris, shops including Louis Vuitton and Hermès were looted, cars were torched and barricades went up. Hooded protesters pushed to within about 150 yards of the Élysée Palace, the presidential residence, before riot police drove them back.
President Emmanuel Macron, in the final months of his term, was not in a backing down mood:
Let them come and get me.
Close to 400 people had been arrested by Saturday night. The government blamed far left agitators for hijacking a mostly peaceful day of marches and promised concrete answers on living costs within weeks.
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