Organisers said more than 800,000 took part in demonstrations across the country, with 250,000 in Paris alone. Authorities said 410,000 demonstrated nationwide. The protests were over the high cost of living and lack of funding for education.
Clashes broke out Saturday in Paris and other French cities as demonstrations were held a week after others that descended into street violence, prompting President Emmanuel Macron's government to launch a massive security operation this time around.
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Protesters demonstrated over the high cost of living in France, rising fuel prices and a lack of funding for education. They come after a series of protests which started in the capital's high schools last month, with students demanding more funding for education, more teachers in schools and better facilities.
Those protests then went nationwide before expanding to include wider society.
Though the protests were largely peaceful and there was no repeat of the scale of last week's rioting and looting, police arrested nearly 1,000 people, with Interior Minister Laurent Nunez saying "an extremely elevated level of violence" from black-clad "ultra-left" extremists had taken place.
Riot squads fired tear gas at protesters in the capital as well as in Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille, Toulouse, Montpellier and Nantes.
Two people were "seriously" injured, Nunez said: one man in Toulouse, who reportedly had fingers blown off, and another person in Clermont-Ferrand. He did not give details of either case.
Authorities had deployed 70,000 security forces across the country for the new marches.
The violence came a week after rioting that saw public buildings vandalised, hundreds of shops looted and 2,700 people arrested, casting a pall over a country that goes to the polls in six months to choose a successor to President Emmanuel Macron after 10 years.
Nunez said Saturday's outcome was more "positive" than a week ago, with more police on the streets acting more rapidly, conducting more pre-demonstration checks and better protecting businesses.
There was nevertheless widespread anger at the government over a protest crackdown viewed as repressive and as an assault on the right to protest.
Protests also took place in Italy, Belgium, Spain and Portugal over different issues, yet with some overlap on inflation and education problems.
Fears of a repeat of last week's events
Mass protests last Saturday saw widespread violence and clashes with police in several cities, with buildings and vehicles set alight and masked individuals smashing shop windows and looting stores. Unrest continued in Paris last Sunday, as masked youths erected flaming barricades and police charged crowds.
The French government ramped up security operations this weekend, and many businesses took matters into their own hands and boarded up windows or closed for the day.
A last-minute route change to a planned Paris protest prompted pushback from unions and politicians on the left in France, who argued that the move could scatter demonstrators and fuel further chaos.
Police had initially approved a march between Bastille and Nation squares in the east of the capital but overturned the decision on Friday, instead proposing a route between Porte d’Italie and Porte de Vincennes along the city's southeastern edge.
To the south of the capital, authorities also kept a close watch over the hard-right National Rally party's congress in Orléans.
The event, which saw both Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella speak, drew both supporters and counterprotesters.
Police said at around midday that they had seized multiple items "intended for use in acts of violence or to create a hostile atmosphere," in locations including Orléans, Pau, Rennes, Marseille, and Tours.