The Nice attack has changed the mood in France. Public confidence in the government is wavering, and the gulf between Muslims and the secular majority grows apace

when three radical Islamists attacked the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris in January last year, killing 17 people, French citizens rallied in defiant support of their democracy. President François Hollande led 40 foreign heads of state and government in an impressive protest march in the capital.

When terror struck again in Paris last November, with 10 gunmen and bombers wiping out 130 lives at cafés, bistros and a rock concert hall, the government imposed a state of emergency and proposed tough laws to nip future plots in the bud. There was no huge march then and the mood was sullen.

Now the scourge has hit Nice, where a lone killer rammed and crushed 84 victims, including many children, with a 19-tonne refrigerator truck after a fireworks display on the national holiday of 14 July, which celebrates the French Revolution and its secular values of liberty, equality and fraternity. This time, politicians resorted to bickering, and public ire mounted. On the morning after the massacre, a young woman summed up the mood as she placed a candle at a dried bloodstain on the Promenade des Anglais. “We’re fed up with living like this,” she told a television reporter.