In Paris, 70,000 protesters marched along boulevards on the south-eastern outskirts, avoiding the city centre. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez had warned earlier in the week that Saturday looked like a very high risk day and announced the deployment of 70,000 police and gendarmes, including elite units, to quell violence on the protests' sidelines.
The Paris police prefecture stated that a hardcore of several hundred rioters attacked police with projectiles, including a molotov cocktail.
In Lyon, protesters threw projectiles at police, prompting officers to fire teargas and baton charges. In Toulouse, police used water cannon against an unauthorised protest that drew several thousand people, mostly young demonstrators.
Thousands of police deployed across France on Saturday as tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in dozens of cities for education, health, the climate, and an affordable life.
As evening approached and the largely peaceful demonstrations came to an end, police in several cities fired teargas and stun grenades to disperse crowds joined by groups of masked rioters.
Saturday's rallies followed a wave of mass protests on 17 October that saw widespread street violence and looting across numerous French cities in one of the worst days of civil unrest in the country's recent history. About 320,000 people took part in the nationwide rallies, according to the interior ministry, marking a decrease from an estimated 410,000 participants the previous weekend.