In the cobbled streets of Dijon’s medieval centre, tourists tuck into boeuf bourguignon, sip Hautes-Côtes de Beaune, and besiege the local mustard shop.

The Bareuzai, Dijon’s statue of a vintner crushing grapes, beams at the bustling gateway to arguably the world’s greatest wine region.

Yet, there is an unwelcome scratch on the picture postcard.

Unbeknownst to the tourists, pockets of the capital of the Duke of Burgundy have been caught in the crossfire between “aristocrats” of a less illustrious ilk – drug barons waging a deadly turf war.

Hostilities erupted in November, when a 55-year-old man was killed by a stray bullet as he slept in his home in Stalingrad. Tensions came to a bloody head in March when a 19-year-old man was fatally stabbed in the Talant district and a 15 year-old was shot dead at a drug dealing point in the Belvédère estate.

“Before, we used to bury grandfathers and grandmothers, but now I get the impression that more and more young people are departing,” said the mother of one teenage victim.

“Why Dijon? We don’t know.”

Sitting in her vast municipal office in Dijon’s ducal palace, deputy mayor Nathalie Koenders was keen to vaunt its myriad qualities, such as the region’s Unesco-protected “climats” – vineyards crafted over centuries by monks. 

On July 4, Tour de France cyclists will hurtle through these during a time trial to Gevrey-Chambertin while the Olympic flame will proudly pass through the town on July 12.

“Dijon is calm. We have a very high quality of life,” said the socialist kayaking French ex-champion. “That doesn’t mean we can’t have isolated incidents, like other towns and cities everywhere.”

Indeed, previously unthinkable scenes are being repeated across a rising number of small and medium-sized towns around France, according to a hard-hitting report by the French senate on drug trafficking released last week, which warned that the country was “submerged” by drug dealing and that president Emmanuel Macron’s response was “meagre” and “not up to the task”.

“Contrary to the cliché that drug trafficking is the preserve of no-go zones stretching from the northern suburbs of Marseille to ‘crack hill’ in Paris, and perhaps a few festivals, drug dealing has spread to medium-sized and even small towns and rural areas,” it wrote.

With cocaine flooding France from South America, notably via the port of Le Havre, consumption on the rise and historic bastions like Marseille saturated, organised crime is fanning out to the provinces in search of a bigger slice of a €3.5 billion (£3bn) annual drugs business.

From Verdun to Valence, “a number of sensitive neighbourhoods in medium-sized towns have been the scene of armed clashes,” warned Ofast, the French anti-drugs agency, adding that “smaller urban areas” are no longer spared “kidnappings, violence and even murder”.

“Drug dealing and sporadic violence between rival gangs have long existed,” Dijon prosecutor Olivier Caracotch told the Telegraph. “But what we have witnessed over the past year is an acceleration.”

Cedric Bovrisse of the Alliance police union in Dijon put it more bluntly. “The Marseillais have arrived,” he said, adding that members of DZ Mafia, one of the two main Marseillais gangs, was seeking inroads in the town of 160,000, and which has a half-dozen drug dealing spots.

Easy access by train or motorway from Paris, Lyon, Grenoble and even Marseille made it attractive, but not always to the right people.

“Now they’re arriving in Dijon and they want to take control of the big deal points that generate more than €10,000 a day. They come well armed. Before they went after the bosses, now they don’t hesitate to shoot the foot soldiers.”

A Telegram video is doing the rounds of a recent hit job on a Dijon scout with the words “DZ Mafia” on the footage. He was seriously injured.

Aware of the worrying trend, the Macron government in March launched a high-profile “XXL” anti-drugs “clean-up” operation in which it sent hundreds of police to known drug dealing spots across France.

That month, Dijon’s trouble spots were besieged by 600 police officers over three weeks. The operation ended in the relatively modest seizure of 8.5kg of drugs, 47 weapons and 213 arrests. Around 25 were convicted.

A key target was 10 avenue Champollion in the northeastern Grésilles district, notorious as the town’s biggest drug dealership and scene of 2015 riots involving members of the Chechen diaspora.

At a morning food market just yards from the notorious hub, locals had mixed feelings about the high-profile police sting.

Sevrine Damy, 49, a statistician, said: “My daughter found the police presence reassuring. She goes to school in this area and was tired of having scouts scream every time the police turned up. 

“But as soon as they left, the dealers came back. It will change nothing because the problem is far deeper and widespread. This isn’t particular to Dijon, it’s national and international.”

With two small daughters in tow, Mohammed, 42, a heating and air conditioning technician lives right inside the estate.

“I see the dealers less since the police raids so we’re happy about that. Things were getting out of hand. A guy got shot over there. And we’d had enough of all these people queuing up to buy drugs - everyone from workmen to executives in suits, drug addicts, lots of young people and a few old.

“That said, the problem has simply been displaced. The scouts are still here but have just moved down the road a bit,” he added. 

Two stared at us from a cafe terrace opposite the local pharmacy.

“They either bring them in from other towns like Paris, Marseille or Nimes, or, increasingly, use undocumented migrants from North Africa, West Africa, Afghanistan who have nothing to lose.”

Mr Caracotch, the prosecutor, said the raids had been helpful as he was able to launch a number of deeper investigations on the back of them that may bear fruit.

But catching the bigger fish was another story, he conceded.

Three French-Moroccan brothers known to run the Champollion gang have been convicted in absentia and are subject to an international arrest warrant. “Are they in Dubai, or Morocco? Either way it is complicated,” as neither country is likely to agree to extradite them, he said.

“In general, the money is invested abroad under false names, which makes it difficult to identify, seize, and of course confiscate, requiring more resources.”

Chasing the money

Bosses can “easily replace” foot soldiers and are merely “put out” by prison terms as they “often continue to control drug trafficking from behind bars”, he said.  “What really hurts them is taking their accumulated wealth – shops, cars, houses, cash  because they’re capitalists. This is what is perhaps lacking at present.”

Last week’s senatorial report came to similar conclusions, calling for systematic “asset investigations”, “a judicial freeze” on unexplained assets, and powers to confiscate them “without a criminal conviction”. 

It also called for a French version of America’s Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA, and a dedicated anti-drug prosecutor’s office.

Without a major overhaul, France risked gradually sliding towards becoming a “narco state”, it even warned.

Dijon’s beautiful old town seems a world away from such considerations.

In the Maille mustard shop, a group of Germans noisily discussed the merits of “moutarde au chardonnay de Bourgogne” and other varieties, including one with scotch whisky and smoked black pepper.

In his snails and truffle store, Maxime Raoux, 34, said he was vaguely aware of the turf war. His girlfriend, a florist, had her shop broken into shortly after the police raids of March. 

“In Fontaine d’Ouche, another hotspot, lots of chemists were burgled. When dealers lose business they get into debt and steal to pay back suppliers,” he said.

“But beyond that, it’s pretty quiet around here. To be honest, people are more worried about the recent damage to vineyards from hail than showers of bullets.”