Watching France burn this weekend made me think of that moment in 2017 when Emmanuel Macron became president on a platform of change and hope and, well, “Révolution.” That was the title of the book he published before the election as a kind of manifesto for how to beat the far right.

Less than a year after Brexit and Donald Trump’s first election, Macron did beat Marine Le Pen. I was living in London at the time, where there were French families who spontaneously left to return to France to be part of his “mouvement.”

Almost a decade later, Le Pen looks more likely than ever to become France’s next president. Today I write about how Macron may get his revolution — but not the one he was hoping for.

The man who didn’t save France

There were already signs that Emmanuel Macron wasn’t totally checked in.

When thousands of high school students took to the streets earlier this month protesting funding cuts in education, the French president chose to spend the day on a warship off the coast of Brittany. As my colleague Mark Landler reported, Macron watched a new ballistic missile being fired from a French nuclear-powered submarine, leaving it to his prime minister to try to reassure the French people that the government was on top of the crisis.

Then things got worse.

By the time Macron finally spoke publicly on Sunday, the student protests had snowballed into broader violent riots across the country with many more people. Crowds smashed windows, burned cars, looted stores and vandalized public buildings, including the near-destruction of the historic town hall in the city of Limoges.