French far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour promised on Sunday a "reconquest" against decades of decline at his first political rally, as scuffles with anti-racism protesters broke out on its fringes.

"If I win this election, it won't be another rotation of power but a reconquest of the greatest country in the world," Zemmour said in a nearly hour-and-a-half-long speech.

He said he was calling his party "Reconquest", a name that evokes the historic period known as the Reconquista, when Christian forces drove Muslim rulers from the Iberian peninsula...