Webster's 3rd unabridged:
émeute - an outbreak of disorder or violence; /esp/: a popular uprising
OED:
émeute - A popular rising or disturbance.
(most recent citation 1886)
web examples:
• The Girondists were idealists, doctrinaires and theorists rather than men of action; they encouraged, it is true, the armed petitions which resulted, to their dismay, in the émeute of June 20
• After the émeute of October 5 and 6, 1789[,] the club, still entirely composed of deputies,followed the National Assembly to Paris
• “all movements provoked more or less arbitrarily by coteries remained mere émeutes [riotous outbreaks]” (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 10, p314).
• the prejudice which always exists in Paris against the Police having given
vent to itself in several serious émeutes (Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Mystery of Marie Roget')
For when threatened with emeutes,
Tarantara! tarantara!
And your heart is in your boots,
Tarantara!
(W.S. Gilbert, 'Pirates of Penzance')
http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/pirates/web_op...