The Night of the Barricades

Students who had been shut out of the Sorbonne built some sixty barricades in the streets around it out of paving stones, felled trees and parked cars. The police cleared them at two in the morning with tear gas and batons; hundreds on both sides were hurt and a radio station broadcast it live through the night.

What had been a dispute about university rules became a general strike of some nine million workers within a fortnight — the largest in French history. The government held, but the country did not go back to what it had been.