Nearly 10,000 people took to the streets of the small French town of Dammartin-en-Goele Sunday where the manhunt for the two brothers who massacred 12 people at a satirical magazine came to a bloody end.

It was not just Paris -- where a huge march was due to start -- but towns and cities all over the country that came out in support of free speech and to mark their sorrow at this week's attacks in the capital.

Early estimates suggested at least 150,000 people were out marching on Sunday in places outside Paris.

In the tiny town of Saint-Etienne in the southeast, some 60,000 people -- more than a third of the entire population -- joined a march from the railway station to the town hall.

There were similar scenes everywhere from Perpignan in the Pyrenees of southern France to Blois in the Loire valley. 

Dammartin-en-Goele, around 40 kilometers from Paris, is where Cherif and Said Kouachi were killed by elite police forces after holing up in a small printing firm on Friday.

The demonstrators there on Sunday out-numbered the population of the town, which is only around 8,000. (AFP)