NO TARGET is too soft for killers inspired by Islamic State. On July 26th in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a small town in Normandy, two knife-wielding terrorists entered a church. They took hostage the 85-year-old priest celebrating mass and the tiny congregation, two nuns and two parishioners. They slit Father Jacques Hamel’s throat as he knelt before the altar. Police shot and killed the terrorists; one other hostage was critically injured. The jihadists’ “barbaric attack on a church”, as the prime minister, Manuel Valls, put it, recast France’s conflict with terror as a primitive war of religion.

The murder added to the nation’s sense of siege. Less than two weeks had elapsed since the horror of Nice, when a man of Tunisian origin killed 84 people by driving a lorry through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day. The mood of defiant solidarity forged after last year’s Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks in Paris is eroding.

Within a few hours of the latest attack, the president, François Hollande, appeared at the scene, flanked by his stolid interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, to express his dismay at the “desecration of democracy” and to promise to use “all means necessary” to defeat those who have declared war on France and its values. While warning that the threat of new atrocities remains high, he called for national unity and almost prayed that the terrorists not succeed in their aim of fomenting division.

For many French, these once-reassuring words are growing wearisome. Single attacks, however terrible, can unite a shocked nation, but France has suffered at least 14 terrorist assaults in the past two years, in which more then 240 people have been killed and over 600 injured. Moreover, the attacks have been widespread: eight of the 12 mainland regions of France have been hit. Intelligence services say many more plots have been foiled.

Ten months before a presidential election, a mood of anger and frustration over the state’s failure to keep people safe is growing. Adel Kermiche, one of the Normandy knifemen, was twice arrested last year while trying to travel to Syria and had been detained for ten months. Prosecutors argued that he posed a sufficient threat to remain in jail, but in March a judge ordered that the 19-year-old be put under house arrest and wear an electronic tag for surveillance. The tag was switched off for a few hours every morning—during which time Mr Kermiche committed murder.

The public finds such decisions incomprehensible. Crowds in Nice booed Mr Valls at a memorial service last week. Mr Cazeneuve is also under pressure. Police responsible for video surveillance in Nice claimed his office tried to meddle in their report on the July 14th attack, by allegedly demanding that they say the videos showed enough well-armed national police to guard the crowds. Mr Cazeneuve denies making any such demands, and says he will sue those who made the accusations. But he has not yet explained a request last week from SDAT, an anti-terrorism agency under his interior ministry, for the Nice authorities to destroy the video footage. Supposedly this was to prevent leaks, lest extremists used the film for propaganda. Many suspect a cover-up.

All of this is casting doubt on Mr Hollande’s future. Two days before the murder of Father Hamel, Ifop, a pollster, found that 65% of respondents lacked confidence in his handling of terrorism. He had promised to end France’s state of emergency, imposed after the Bataclan attacks, over criticism that its provisions are undemocratic. Instead, after the outrage in Nice, he extended it: polls show most voters crave a stronger crackdown.

Nicolas Sarkozy, a former president and the leader of the centre-right Republican party, jumped on the law-and-order bandwagon. “We must be merciless…the legal quibbling, precautions and pretexts for insufficient action are not acceptable,” he said. He demanded that the government enact a list of security measures, including either holding all Islamist suspects in detention or electronically tagging them to prevent potential attacks.

The leader of the xenophobic National Front, Marine Le Pen, blamed the attack on France’s entire political establishment: “All those who have governed us for 30 years”. Mr Hollande, whose polling numbers are abysmal, is said to be so pessimistic that he may announce he will not stand in next year’s election. If the attacks continue, Ms Le Pen seems sure to reach the second round. Voters are growing insistent that someone stop the bloodshed.