RESERVOIR YOBS

Now French riot over giant man-made lake that eco-warriors and farmers claim favours Big Business

GENDARMES on quad bikes face an army of protesters across a field… a police car hit by mortars erupts in flames… two policemen on fire shield themselves from the mob’s onslaught.

As the civil unrest sweeping France reached the countryside yesterday, these were some of the extraordinary scenes from outside a remote village between La Rochelle and Limoges.

But this time the mob – an alliance of violent environmental campaigners, farmers and anticapitalists – was rioting over a controversial reservoir project.

About 3,000 police faced more than 6,000 militants, some waving flags, some armed with explosives. At least 16 officers were injured. Of the many wounded activists, two were in hospital ‘in a very serious condition’.

Officers were pelted with Molotov cocktails and fired tear gas at the protesters in return.

The French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin later called the violence ‘appalling and unacceptable’ and accused ‘ultraLeft’ rioters of using mortars to launch explosives.

Three police vehicles were engulfed by flames, sending black smoke drifting over the nearby village of Sainte-Soline. ‘Both sides fought all morning across the field – like a battle from the Middle Ages,’ said a villager.

Opponents claim that the giant reservoir serves large exportoriented grain farms at the expense of nature and small agriculture. ‘While the country is rising up to defend pensions, we will simultaneously stand up to defend water,’ said the organisers, gathering under the banner of ‘Bassines non merci’ – ‘No to reservoirs, thank you.’

The violence underscored fears that France’s anger transcends the pensions row. Until now the nationwide unrest, looting and mass protests has been a response to President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to raise the state pension age from 62 to 64 without a parliamentary vote.

On Friday, with the violence spiralling out of control, Mr Macron cancelled King Charles’s state visit, which would have included a banquet at the Palace of Versailles tomorrow evening.

A former British ambassador to France said yesterday that this could have had echoes of the 1789 French Revolution.

Peter Ricketts, who was Britain’s envoy in France from 2012 to 2016, said the dinner would have been poorly timed because of the revolt over pension reform.

‘The fact that there are now these violent protests, which seem to be growing, made the idea of a banquet in Versailles a particularly bad idea,’ said Lord Ricketts. ‘That had all kinds of echoes from the past going back to the revolution.’ He added that ‘it is right to postpone’.

In the 18th Century, the revolt over living standards in comparison to the extravagance of the court of Louis XVI resulted in the monarchy being overthrown, a republic established, and his wife Marie Antoinette and others executed.

On Friday, French government sources warned that ‘highly politicised activists’ would have ‘certainly targeted the English King’.

The Mail on Sunday has learnt that the French intended the King and President Macron ‘to dine like old-world monarchs’ in a ‘Michelin-starred banquet’ in the spectacular Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

Luxuries being prepared for Charles included a 30-monthold Comte, his ‘favourite vintage cheese’ and bottles of claret ‘worth hundreds’.