Paris burned. The ‘jaune gilet’ (‘yellow vest’) mobs tore through the heart of Paris, trashed the Champs Elysee and graffitied that symbol of Gallic triumphalism, the Arc de Triomphe.

The yellow vests – a couple of centuries ago they’d have been ‘sans culottes, the ‘no trousers’ mob that stormed the Bastille and slaughtered the guards around the palace – are the latest manifestation of the Paris mob and the succeeded in doing what Hitler’s Reich did not – burning Paris.