Ever since revolutionaries stormed the Bastille demanding cheaper bread and freedom from tyranny, France has maintained a long and colourful history of protest.
Yet the scenes playing out across the country – flames engulfing the Hotel de Ville in Limoges, looters smashing storefronts and setting Renaults ablaze, and brutal clashes between police and demonstrators in Paris’s Place de la Republique – mark some of the worst and most violent unrest France has seen in years.
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