How hundreds of school protests across France are being infiltrated and inflamed by far-Left anarchists hellbent on 'overthrowing the bourgeois state' in a new French Revolution: SUE REID

The grainy footage has horrified France. Mael, a 16-year-old schoolboy, is sitting on the pavement in front of a large pool of blood. His right eye has been destroyed by a police rubber bullet during a violent protest outside a high school, the Lycée Balzac, in the cathedral city of Tours.'Mael was moaning in pain. His eyebrow was swelling. He said his eye stung. We were trying to mop him up with tissues,' recalled Tatiana, who lives next to the school.She had watched police and students face off in the morning- long battle ten days ago – just one of many hundreds of protests to have gripped France recently.Furious rioters started fires after Mael collapsed, almost unconscious. Today, the walls of the Lycée Balzac are covered in black spray-painted graffiti demanding 'Justice pour Mael!'The doors to the premises are locked and, when we visited this week, we saw the side gates on Rue Pinaigrier scorched.'It was infiltrators at the protest who torched our school,' Marence Gendre and Camille Bardon, both 16, told us. 'They are random men with masks who mobilise their followers on Snapchat.'We saw them that day come out of nowhere. Suddenly, they were among us students. We believe it was their violence that provoked the police to attack with rubber bullets.' Protesters throw stones towards riot police during clashes on the sidelines of a demonstration of high-school students as part of a nationwide protest movement over learning conditions in Lyon Riot officers tackle protesters in Paris. Left, a masked demonstrator throws a rock at police lines in Lyon Huge protests at the Place de la Bastille in Paris on Thursday afternoonOne thing is clear. France is facing a modern-day insurrection that threatens to run out of control.On Tuesday, when the worst unrest took place, the French Interior Ministry said 'urban violence' brought 266,000 protesters on to the streets across the country, with 56,000 in Paris alone.Since the school riots began in late September they have engulfed the nation, from Marseilles in the south to Strasbourg in the north east, moving from classrooms into universities and now workplaces.This week the Ministry of National Education reported that 891 high schools – nearly a quarter of all the lycées in France – have been disrupted or blockaded. The total number of affected schools is thought to be as high as 1,800. Additionally, up to 500 were closed by authorities.Nearly 800 gendarmes and 85 teachers have been injured, 6,500 protesters arrested and, as of last night, 18 investigations are under way into excessive use of force by police.On Wednesday, interior minister Laurent Nunez ordered police to suspend the use of a new type of stun grenade after a 15-year-old high school pupil had his hand blown off during a protest in Lens, northern France.These chaotic scenes are unfolding against a febrile political backdrop. Emmanuel Macron is clinging to power as a lame-duck, liberal president.A presidential election is scheduled for April, which Right-wing populist Marine Le Pen of the National Rally party is predicted to win.Ms Le Pen appears to endorse claims of far-Left agitators infiltrating the recent unrest. Although the trigger for the protests was ostensibly overcrowded classrooms, decaying buildings and teacher shortages, she claims that France is witnessing 'organised riots' by far-Left 'professional activists' inspired by her presidential rival Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the ultra-Left movement La France Insoumise, or 'France Unbowed'.Although he has condemned the violence, Mr Mélenchon, 75, thought it appropriate to march with rioters, even accepting a kiss from at least one keffiyeh-clad teenager.After the Daily Mail was told by pupils from the Lycée Balzac, where Mael was shot, of mysterious figures at its student protest, we spoke to a local journalist who has covered ten school riots in Tours, which is run by a socialist and green coalition. This week the Ministry of National Education reported that 891 high schools – nearly a quarter of all the lycées in France – have been disrupted or blockaded. Pictured: Protests at the Place de la Bastille in Paris The total number of affected schools is thought to be as high as 1,800. Additionally, up to 500 were closed by authorities. Pictured: Protests at the Place de la Bastille in Paris This well-informed writer told us: 'Different groups are turning up. There are arsonists who deliberately start fires and anarchists who provoke chaos, even throwing bottles of acid.'They all come under what France loosely calls 'the black block'. They are ultra-Leftists who move from riot to riot, dress entirely in dark clothing, cover their faces, and march at the front, antagonising the police.'We have delved further into the 'black block' and found it has links to Révolution Permanente (RP), a four-year-old Trotskyist party established to 'overthrow the French bourgeois state'. Its spokespeople include a lawyer who is advising injured student protesters, and it boasts a thriving youth wing, Le Poing Levé, or as 'The Raised Fist' – a symbol of Leftist solidarity.Political researchers in London and Paris told the Daily Mail this week: 'There is now substantial publicly available evidence that organisations of the French revolutionary Left are actively trying to extend, organise and radicalise the current lycée protest, connecting it with universities and workers before turning it into a broader political and industrial movement.'One explained that the 'revolutionary Left have intervened deliberately and actively in the protests', and highlighted an intelligence note from police in Paris dated September 28 – two days before Mael was partially blinded in Tours.This note recorded that 'outside political activists' appeared at the first lycée protests, which took place in the capital's northern suburb of Saint-Denis, an impoverished and highly diverse area, where large numbers of residents have immigrant backgrounds. Here, students who had complained of being forced into 'more hours of lessons than sleep' used flaming wheelie bins to block school entrances.One smart and modern lycée, built in 2014, was burnt to a shell.Police have pointed out that student demonstrations here began peacefully. They turned volatile after fires were mysteriously started in the streets, and dangerous projectiles including petrol bombs were thrown at officers.It was here, in Paris's troubled Saint-Denis suburb, that Ritchy Thibault, 23, activist and former parliamentary aide to Mr Mélenchon's La France Insoumise, whipped up a student crowd nine days ago by threatening to burn the Élysée, the president's official palace, and asserting: 'We are going to attack every police station in the country. We are going to set the Élysée on fire.'He has since been arrested, placed under judicial supervision, and banned from attending demonstrations.Yet as France continues to burn, it is clear that the Left shows no sign of giving up its revolution. 'I am not calling for calm at all – I am calling for people to continue to revolt,' 'Alexis', of Le Poing Levé, declared this week, demanding underground planning and 'links with workers'.The organisation has refused a government invitation to meet the education minister, which it claimed was an attempt to 'kill our movement'. This week, Le Poing Levé called for a 'black week' of blockades to be carried out beyond the education system. Meanwhile, Anasse Kazib, a leading light in the group, published an impassioned tract arguing that the 'lycée revolt' should now move 'to a general strike'.The influential French newspaper Le Monde has reported that at a quarter of 27 protests monitored in 12 towns or cities, intelligence services identified trade unionists, Leftist politicians, and 'outsiders' among the throng. This, says the Government, is evidence of the far Left's influence in the rising unrest now sweeping the country, which, this week, reached the Place de la Bastille in Paris, where protesters hurled roof tiles down on the heads of officers with riot shields.The tragic spate of injuries emerging among ordinary students has coincided with a declaration by the far-Left mayor of Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko – a French citizen of Malian origin who attended some protests and collapsed when police sprayed tear gas in his face – claiming provocatively: 'Violence can become legitimate at a certain point.'Furthermore, Le Parisien newspaper has reported that some Left-wing influencers told their Snapchat followers to 'bring knives' and 'stab civilians in the crowd' at a protest in Strasbourg.Similar scenes of horrific violence were repeated in other southern French cities, including Marseille, Lyon and Bordeaux. Student protests in the centre of the city of Tours France on TuesdayIn other regions, a 17-year-old Bulgarian student claims he was nearly drowned in an 'attempted murder' by police during lycée unrest in Belfort, eastern France. He insists he was chased into a river by a plain-clothes officer who held his head under water.The circumstances of this incident are being investigated as it emerged that the officer allegedly only freed the Bulgarian student after another youth attacked him, striking him with his fist and knocking him to the ground.Nearer Paris, in Pontoise, a 14-year-old schoolboy called Eden was maimed in the face during the riots after being struck by a police grenade, leaving his jaw shattered and teeth broken at a sixth form college called Château d'Epluches. 'He just stepped outside his classroom out of curiosity to look at what was going on,' said a fellow pupil, who insisted that the youngster was not a violent person.A teacher at the scene gave a similar account to both the Daily Mail and local newspapers.She said that Eden was filming the protest with his mobile phone when a police officer hit him with a baton. Eden retaliated, and another officer fired a Cougar tear-gas grenade launcher into his face at almost point-blank range.Eden's mother has sought help from Révolution Permanente and after receiving legal advice intends to complain formally to the police.She said her son's 'mouth is wrecked, all his upper teeth are broken', adding: 'As for the bottom ones, we don't know what is left. He is in hospital, his jaw wired shut and facing several more operations.'There is just enough space to pass a straw through the wire, and he can only feed on liquids. He is having panic attacks.'Eden's very vocal lawyer is Elsa Marcel, 33, an official spokeswoman and Paris municipal councillor for Révolution Permanente.She is urging workers to support the school blockades, praising those from the port city of Le Havre who have already done so.A self-declared Trotskyist with dual American and French citizenship, Ms Marcel is demanding, among other things, the seizure by the state of thousands of vacant private houses for low income and homeless people. Nearly 800 gendarmes and 85 teachers have been injured, 6,500 protesters arrested and, as of last night, 18 investigations are under way into excessive use of force by police. Pictured: Protests at the Place de la Bastille in ParisShe refused to speak to the Daily Mail but issued a statement declaring that Eden's injuries illustrated the 'extreme gravity' of police violence at the riots.When we visited Château d'Epluches, where Eden was so horrifically injured, students told us that their original campaign for better classroom conditions had morphed into a crusade of anger and hatred against the police.For far-Left revolutionaries, Mael's life-changing eye injury is the result of uncontained brutality by a police force running out of control.To some conservatives, he is a young fool who took a huge risk by reportedly skipping lessons at his own school to attend a riot at another two miles away.Two days later, in a bitter irony, Mael's own sprawling sixth form college across town, where he was learning technical subjects for a trade, was also torched during horrendous scenes, recorded on social media, that show masked protesters in black using tree branches to break large windows and run with flaming wheelie bins at the gates, which have been left twisted and charred.And then we have Mael's parents, who, perhaps inevitably in the modern world, say their 'blameless' son was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.'He has no involvement, direct or indirect, in any form of political activism. He is simply a teenager who found himself caught in tragic events which ended in him being physically harmed,' they said.That is not how everyone near the Lycée Balzac, in this idyllic part of France, sees it.Outside the school at 7am last Wednesday, we looked at the damage inflicted on the handsome 19th century building.As we did so, a man living next to the school, perhaps in his 50s, came past walking his dog.He wanted to have his say when he realised we were journalists. 'Among the students who were protesting when this boy was hurt were some very violent thugs,' he explained.'We have never had problems with the pupils, who seem polite.'This was different. It looked like a mob was there who deliberately wanted to make the police angry.'Then, without me asking, he volunteered the information that he was looking forward to next year's presidential elections, explaining: 'I will be voting for Madame Le Pen. A lot of the residents in Tours were in two minds before this school rioting across our city.'Now we are certain we are going to support her.'