The first thing I learned on the streets of Paris this weekend is that there is no arguing with teargas. I arrived at Place de la République just after 1pm yesterday. The mood was festive until police started firing volleys of teargas into the square from Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple.

I didn’t see the inciting incident – if there even was one – and tried walking into the cloud of CS gas hanging in the air. It was impossible. The gas clings to your nose and burns your eyes, and you quickly start struggling to breathe. I retreated towards the Boulevard de Magenta, blinking furiously to stop the stinging.

This approach to the crowd had been adopted by the authorities early in the day, causing chaos across the city and setting the tone for what would follow. A friend had to return to her home with her elderly parents because police had fired teargas “at random” at a crowd of young people in Strasbourg-Saint-Denis in the 10th arrondissement.

I headed back up the Boulevard de Magenta. There I met protesters including Bartholemew, a student at the Sorbonne, who had come to “support the highschoolers first and foremost, and to demand more money in public schools, from primary schools to universities”. Another major factor that he said had motivated him to come out on to the street “was the repression faced by highschoolers, who are under 18”, such as an incident in Lens, where a police grenade blew........

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