ON THE first Thursday of November, 700 trucks blocked the main roads into Paris or took part in operations escargo - snail operations - in which trucks drove three abreast at walking pace, snarling up following traffic.

They were driven that day by the owners and senior executives of road haulage firms, complaining that the rising cost of diesel oil and government restrictions on drivers' working hours were pushing them out of business.

The demonstration heralded France's latest "Jacquerie", the name given to a 1358 peasant revolt, a repeatable and repetitive feast that has become so much part of French tradition that, even though their neighbours look on aghast, the French themselves take it in their stride.

What the bosses did not know on November 7th was that their drivers were going to follow their example and start a protest movement 10 days later that was to see some 250 road blocks spring up all over France and put a slow stranglehold on the national economy.

In keeping with tradition the government caved in and put pressure on the haulage firms to give in, too. The drivers obtained several expensive concessions, particularly retirement at 55 and agreements on pay that will make life even more difficult for France's 36,000 truck firms.

The new Jacquerie led to violence, even deaths. Fist fights broke out between French and foreign drivers, who found themselves prisoners of the snarl ups at motor way toll gates and other strategic points. After one fight, a German driver ended up in hospital in a coma. "The Spaniards nearly strangled us," said Gilles, a driver in a blockade near Bordeaux. "They just didn't want to understand."

Although two deaths resulted from accidents caused by the roadblocks, there was rarely any serious suggestion that the police might move to end the chaos.

Only once did confrontation with the authorities loom. This was last Tuesday when two empty tanker lorries blocked access to the Grigny oil depot south of Paris. Police arrived immediately, noted the identity of the two drivers, then drove away. Grigny supplies much of the Paris region's civilian needs and is also a military fuel depot.

THE French media dispatched reporters to the scene, expecting that the police would be back in force, detain the drivers and remove their trucks. The police never returned, and other drivers, alerted by CB radio messages from their colleagues, headed for Grigny to reinforce the blockade and raised the prospect of throttling Paris's fuel supplies. The drivers spontaneous lifted the road block after three days, meaning that the capital was never seriously threatened with fuel shortages.

Elsewhere, fuel was rationed and factories began to run short of the materials they needed to keep going. In the Paris cafes and at bourgeois dinners, the French praised the drivers' determination. An opinion poll showed that 74 per cent of the French backed the drivers. Among those particularly expressing sympathy with their cause were police unions, representing members who deal with the truckdrivers daily.

"Of course, it's a little long," said a middle aged, middle class woman in Montpellier, one of the cities where bus drivers also walked off the job on the 13th day to claim retirement at 55. "But everyone has to fight for his beef steak. It's a question of survival."

Television news broadcasts showed children taking food and drink to drivers huddled round camp fires. Village mayors opened school locker rooms in the evenings so the drivers could take showers. "Without the locals, we would have croaked," said Philippe, a driver outside Bordeaux.

The left leaning Le Monde mused about the phenomenon, asking whether the French were not all "on a new strike by proxy," sympathising with the aims of the strike and happy to stay out of it. The "eternally grumpy" French, it suggested, showed a touching indulgence, "an understanding benevolence" towards their grumpiest compatriots.

While government ministers and some businessmen were among the few to fulminate about the economic damage, a tired looking manager of a Nestle factory near the Alps noted that this was not the first time he had had to envisage laying off staff because of events beyond his control.

"Every year," he said as machines behind him coated a nut mixture with liquid chocolate, "something happens to hold us hostage.

In earlier years, supplies to his factory might have been held up by farmers' protests or steel workers blocking railway lines. Last year, it was the turn of civil servants and railwaymen protesting against welfare reform and restructuring of the SNCF railways.

Then, Paris was like a city under siege, with no public transport for three weeks. The strikes ruined the Christmas season for shops and businesses all over the country. From that period, said Le Monde, most Parisians only remember the fun of getting to work by skateboard, bicycle or hitch hiking.

As the truck drivers looked at times as though they might prompt - a similar paralysis this Christmas, most foreign drivers railed against their French colleagues, but a few - were sympathetic. One British driver interviewed on French television said he admired their solidarity. But in Britain, he said, such a protest could never happen. "The police would come along, put you, you and you in prison and tow the lorries away," he said.

IN France, things are different and some of the rebels even felt safe enough to take last weekend off. Making seat reservations by mobile phone, they left their trucks in the road blocks and went home by train for a short break. They returned on Monday to visits by bailiffs with dismissal notices - these will almost certainly be revoked as the drivers return to work - and expressed the determination to go on.

"We've got to change it all," said one near Bordeaux, "especially for the youngsters." No one dared venture that the drivers did not have a case. Sometimes driving as far across the Eurasian land mass as Kazakhstan and dealing with the bullying and threats of the various mafias operating in Europe since the fall of communism, many of them earn the annual equivalent of Just under £10,000, a little more than France's legal minimum wage, for working 50 hours a week.

One study suggested that the latest Jacquerie reflected a real social malaise in France. France's personnel managers' association published a report showing that, of the five biggest nations in Europe, the French were the most pessimistic about the future, with 46 per cent of them thinking their situation was getting worse.