The confrontations rumbled late into the night, with crowds behind improvised barricades facing lines of police officers who used nozzles to disperse pepper spray. But the protesters remained defiant, taunting and berating the officers. The two-day operation led to 148 arrests, according to a police spokesman, Hui Chun-tak, who said that people had "had enough" after two months of street blockades.

“I’m here to protect my daughter and the revolution,” said Eric Leung, a postman, standing next to his daughter, a student protester. “We can’t lose Mong Kok. If we do, we must come back.”

Protesters hit by pepper spray were carried back from barricades, and elsewhere the police pulled down people who taunted them. Some protesters left to catch the last trains, but thousands remained.

As the working day got underway on Wednesday, Nathan Road was strewn with debris and sleeping protesters, exhausted after the long night of seesaw confrontations with the police. At the intersections that had been the site of fierce standoffs, fewer police officers and protesters were seen. But at one end of the road, new cordons of the police gathered, then moved into the protest site to help bailiffs prepare to enforce the court injunction and ensure that the demonstrators left.

Initially, that operation was trouble-free. “We’re all so tired,” said Cheng Chung-tai, a teacher at Hong Kong Polytechnic University who is a member of Civic Passion, a political group that has urged defending the Mong Kok site. “Some of us are quite worried that we won’t be able to hold here for another night. There weren’t enough people here last night.”

Many on Nathan Road appeared resigned to departing. Yet a minority, which has been especially vocal at the Mong Kok site, argued that only continued defiance could win concessions from the government. As the police tried to clear the street midmorning, hundreds of protesters resisted, and clashes erupted. A struggle ensued, with the police in helmets and protective vests first plunging forward, then retreating before the shouts of the crowd.