gendarme

"I had enough. I panicked," he told the court, apologising to the two gendarmes he had driven into in the tiny village of Vidaillat west of Clermont-Ferrand.

Several attempts to cross the Channel were stopped by police and gendarmes on Sunday morning - including in Equihen-Plage, Calais and Sangatte - according to French authorities.

Eleven people have since died – nine civilians and two French gendarmes - and there are still French police on the ground.

“Closed. You’ll have to walk around,” a French gendarme had just told them, gesturing towards the south.

Six people have been killed, including two gendarmes, and hundreds of others injured in New Caledonia amid armed clashes, looting and arson, raising new questions about Macron’s handling of France’s colonial legacy.