The beast of Gévaudan V (The Tarasque)

Every year in towns and villages throughout the former Languedoc region and in neighbouring Provence, locals hold an annual procession to commemorate Sainte Marthe: the early medieval saint who delivered the town of Tarascon from a terrible monster known as the Tarasque. 

Above: Conrad Mouren, The procession of the Tarasque in Tarascon (1787). Ink and Watercolour on paper. This shows the popular manifestation of the Tarasque as it persisted in the form of wooden floats covered and decorated to look like the creature for Sainte Marthe’s day parades in the towns of Provence and Languedoc.

The creature had dismembered and eaten local people who dared to step outside of the town’s walls into the countryside beyond until the divinely-appointed saint pacified the beast and bid it to not return. While the story of the Tarasque and the annual celebration of Sainte Marthe began in Provence, and not Languedoc where stories of the Beast of Gévaudan would originate, the two regions shared many cultural traditions which were distinct to them alone. 

Both Provence and Languedoc had been Medieval additions to the French kingdom which provided France’s kings access to the previously inaccessible trade routes of the Mediterranean. Prior to their conquest, and persisting long afterwards, the link provided by the Rhȏne had in effect blurred the sharp cartographic distinctions between these regions, enabling the transmission of culture between the towns which lined the banks of the river, such as Tarascon, Beaucaire, and Avignon.

The Rhȏne and its tributaries had acted as the primary highway of goods and people in the Southern French region characterised by the langue d’oc. A distinct southern dialect which was a distinguishing feature of Southern French culture even after Northern France’s incorporation of Languedoc and Provence in the later Medieval period.

While the Beast of Gévaudan may have hailed from Languedoc, and the Tarasque from Provence, we can understand the two monster stories as having coexisted within a shared cultural geography.

When the beast of Gévaudan was first believed to have struck in 1764, its first victim Jeanne Boulet was killed on the 30th of June, only six days after the feast day, when towns throughout Provence and Languedoc would have put on parades and carnivals dedicated to not only remembering this folkloric myth, but also re-enacting it graphically for the entertainment of people in the streets. 

Above: The Beast of Gévaudan as a Tarasque (c.1764-65). Coloured woodcut. 

Boulet’s village of Ubac was situated close to a nearby bourgh named Sainte-Marthe after the Provencal saint, and the villagers would have been aware of the story of the Tarasque. Locals may even have attended celebrations for the saint in the larger town of Mende only days before the killings started.

Above: M. Ray, Bete feroce qui á ravagé le Gevaudan en l’année 1764. Etching. 

In an age when the pastoral occupation such as that of Boulet was characterised by the ever-present threat of wolf attacks, it is tempting to think that the monstrous dimension attached to Boulet’s killer may have sprung from a localised iconography of a killer monster that has previously gone undiscussed. The iconographic association of the Provencal myth and the Languedoc Beast, linked through the shared cultural activities of the Rhȏne corridor and its surrounding areas, becomes more compelling when the depictions of the Gévaudan creature are compared to those of the Tarasque.

By the sixteenth century, the iconography of the Tarasque had been established in Tarascon and around Southern France, with official stamps on local documents, pilgrim tokens, and the carved stone coat of arms over Tarascon’s city gate all showing the monster as a creature with a semi-feline face but with a more reptilian body, replete with an armoured shell and spines.

This iconography did not exist solely within the vicinity of Tarascon, but as far away in the langue d’oc-speaking area as the small town of Chanteuges, near Mende and the area that was to be the epicentre of the Beast of Gévaudan’s activities. 

In Chanteuges’ Priory of Sainte Anne, built and decorated in 1137, one of the rock basalt carvings on the interior of the nave shows Sainte Marthe accompanied by the Tarasque. The monster has a gargoyle-like face, with bulging and eyes a bared bottom row of jagged teeth along with the scaly skin that has been rendered over its hunched over body, but is not present on the creature’s face. 

Here, in this small town on the outer edge of roads linking Montpellier to Lyon, and far from the direct influence of the Rhȏne and the town of Tarascon, this sculpted representation of the Tarasque is an early example of the consistency of the monster’s iconography across the geographical range of Sainte-Marthe’s popularity. While the carving at Chanteuges shows the geographical spread of Tarasque iconography throughout the Rhône trade route, the consistency of the monster’s depictions lasted well into the eighteenth century and beyond, carrying on to the present day. 

The Beast of Gévaudan IV (preference for women and girls)

 

One feature of the 'Beast of Gévaudan', was it's preference for girls and women, most of whom it fataly attacked, men seemed more likely to survive it's attentions. Above: Published in November 1764. It reads, “A picture of the fierce and extraordinary beast that eats girls.”

As the death toll rose in the autumn of 1764, officials and aristocrats had to take action. A great number of volunteers over 30,000 men were raised to action. Poisoned bait was left and some soldiers were even dressed as peasant women in hopes of attracting the beast. 

The press also created popular stories out of the women and children who survived attacks by defending themselves, emphasising the virtue of those who survived or outwitted its attacks.

This real French horror story, real fairy tale must have fed into the psyche of the European population as the stories of devourment continued for over two years. When the Grimm brothers published their tome of  fables in 1812, Little Red Riding Hood must have struck a chord particularly in France, but also across the world as it was so relatable to with the events of Gévaudan.

The Beast of Gévaudan III (Wolf, Hyena or Other?)

Lets have a look at some of the interpretations of the beast, 

Above:18th-century engraving of la Bête du Gévaudan, The London Magazine, vol. xxxiv, May 1765 by A.F. of Alençon.

Above and Below : “Picture of the monster desolating the Gévaudan", German ca. 1764

Above: Another German interpretation of the beast from 1765.

A popular Parisian representation of the 'Beast' showed it as a hyena, and so many of the illustrations are more hyena, but often people seemed not to know what a hyena looked like and so it looks more like a wolf.

Above: B. Chinon, Description de l’Hiene... (1765). Engraving. Paris: Chez Basset

Above: Représentation de la bête féroce nommée hiene (1765). Hand-coloured engraving. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

Despite these exotic assertions that the beast was a hyena, the notion of the creature as a wolf would persist in both the capital and the court, culminating with the king’s assertion that the enormous wolf shot by Antoine was undoubtedly the same creature that had been killing the peasants of Languedoc. 

Wolves  are embedded in the collective Parisian historical consciousness as a real-life ecological signifier of political and social instability. During the famine following the Hundred Year War in 1450, Paris had been besieged by a pack of hungry wolves who ate 40 people before their attacks were curtailed. 

Below: a medieval style montage of the beast.

Above: Giant Beast from the Collection of Pieces Related to the Beast of Gevaudan, by Gervais-François Magné de Marolles, 1765

The Beast of Gévaudan II (Marie Jeanne Valet)

 

An unattributed 18th-century print showing Marie Jeanne Vallet  (also known as the "Maid of Gévaudan") trying to defend herself and her baby sister from the beast of Gévaudan. 

On August 11th 1765, Marie Jeanne Valet was walking across a bridge with her baby sister when the beast charged them. According to legend, Valet stabbed the monster with a knife, and the girls escaped. The incident earned Valet a fierce reputation and the title of the “Maid of Gévaudan.”

Below: A statue in Auvers celebrates Marie Jeanne Valet's bravery.

            

Above: a later etching by François Grenier de Saint-Martin, (1793–1867), of  Jeanne Jouve, whose attempt to save her child from the Beast of Gévaudan made her a national hero, 1839.

The Beast of Gévaudan I

Above is an 18th century print depicting the Beast of Gévaudan. 

'The Beast of Gévaudan', was one of the first ever international news stories. 

Between 1764 and 1767, many people were killed in a remote region of south-central France called the Gévaudan, which today is part of the département of Lozère.  On the 16th of November 1764, the Gazette de France, ran its first story on the Beast, describing it as a ‘cruel animal’ roaming the parishes of the Gévaudan. Ranging over an area of fifty square miles, there were 240 documented attacks.  Of these, 112 people died, 53 were seriously wounded, and 75 got away with  minor injuries. 

Gévaudan was almost as mythical as the monster a remote, isolated backwater of France where the forces of nature had not been fully tamed, and the forests were said to be enchanted.

The first attack occurred in June 1764, when a large, unknown animal attacked a young woman tending cattle near Langogne, she survived only because the bulls in her herd drove the creature away.Just a few weeks later on 30th June, villagers came across the mutilated body of 14 year old shepherdess Jeanne Boulet near a small village in the Lozène region. Jeanne Boulet’s throat was torn to pieces, but her livestock were unharmed.

The blood thirsty creature gained a mythical presence in the terrified population with crazy descriptions of its physical attributes, like a photo fit monster, combining reptile, lion or wolf of enormous size and ferocity. 

By the winter of 1764–1765, the attacks in the Gévaudan had created such a national fervor,  that King Louis XV had to intervene, offering an enormous reward,  equivalent to £10,000, a sum beyond what most men would have earned in a year, for the killing of the 'beast'. Tens of thousands of hunters of course then descended on the region. 

Above: Portrait of Louis XV, King of France, Louis-Michel Vanloo, ca. 1760

Above: Joseph-Marie Vien, Inauguration of the statue of Louis XV, Paris 20th June 1763 

Food shortages after the seven year wars were shaking the popular faith in the 'absolute monarch' as the protector of France and its population, the war had cost France several colonies so the arrival of a 'monster' killing French peasants could not have been at a worse time for the King, when there was a crisis of popular faith in the monarchy. 

The presence of a monstrous creature in the South of France seemed to highlight the struggles already facing both the capital and the kingdom as a whole, as it represented an upset to the natural and ecological order, an apocalyptic harbinger stalking the fields and forests of rural Languedoc. 

Above: Illustration by Thomas Borup 'The hunt for the Beast of Gévaudan'.

King Louis also deployed a dragoon captain, named Jean-Baptiste Duhamel, and a number of royal troops. Yet neither the swarms of hunters, neither Duhamel, nor the pair of professional wolf stalkers Louis eventually sent to replace Duhamel, were able to track down the animal responsible. 

 “It's breast as wide as a horse,” “a body as long as a leopard’s,” and fur that’s that was “red with a black stripe. You will undoubtedly think, like I do, that this is a monster, the father of which is a lion. What its mother was remains to be seen.” Jean-Baptiste Duhamel

Many hunters were determined to secure the honour and prize money. However again and again, they were thwarted in their attempts. Many different animals were killed and presented as the beast, but they were not.

Eventually the frustrated and embarrassed king sent his own gun-bearer and bodyguard, François Antoine, along with his son and a detachment of men. Frances weakness was being flaunted by the English and Americans, in that they were seemingly incapable of capturing or killing a single animal.

Above: Représentation de la Bête féroce qui a été tué le 20 7.bre dans les bois de la réserve de l’Abbaye Royale de Choißé en Auvergne par Mr Antoine 1765.

Antoine traipsed around the forested countryside in search of the beast, and at last, on September 21st 1765, he shot and killed a large wolf, the enormous “Wolf of Chazes”.

He had the body sent to the court at Versailles, where it was stuffed and put on display. He received the large reward from Louis XV, and accepted the villagers’ gratitude. The relieved King declared the matter over, the beast to be dead.

Above: Etching produced at the printing house Chez Mondhare in Paris’ Rue St. Jacques. 

However it was not over, six weeks later the killing resumed . . . the beast was still rampaging, the death toll mounted. King Louis XV refused to believe it and stood by “Wolf of Chazes” being the beast. He obviously did not want to part with more reward money and was mourning his son, 'Louis, Dauphin of France' who died of Tuberculosis aged only 36.

The original bounty hunting hunters sent by king or desire for honour, had been unfamiliar with the landscape and had had trouble communicating with locals. So with no assistance coming from the king and the reward money already disposed of, locals took matters into their own hands.

Eventually, two years later, on June 19, 1767, a sixty year old local man named Jean Chastel (1708-1789), a man with a reputation for piety and integrity, took up his prayer book and his gun and went out with a hunting party and shot the beast, ending the trail of death. 

For his shot he had melted down lead medals of the Black Madonna of Le Puy and cast three bullets which he had blessed during the pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de Beaulieu, whose ruins can still be seen near Mont Mouchet. One of these bullets brought the Beast to its knees, leaving as its epitaph this simple comment from its killer: "Beast, you will eat no more."

Above: Beast Gevaudan, 1873 by Jean Georges Huyot

It was said to be a 53-kilo wolf that Jean Chastel delivered to the King at  Versailles, however it was transported mid summer and hot, so by the time the carcass of the creature arrived, it was quite decomposed and its smell bothered the king, who had it buried immediately without awarding Jean any reward. The place that the beast was buried is unknown and has prevented future generations from discovering the creatures true nature.

However the myth persisted of the creatures otherness and many stories said it was not to be a wolf. As its feet, its ears, the hugeness of its mouth indicated a monster of unknown origin. 

The creature had been autopsied by a local doctor and in its guts had been found the shoulder of a young girl, most probably the one that had been devoured two days before in Pébrac.

Wolf attacks caused as many as 9,000 fatalities across France between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 19th. What made the attacks in Gévaudan memorable, even to today, were their violence and higher-than-average fatalities. Plus the effect of European media, as the press turned them into a riveting international story and a way to embarrass and ridicule the recently defeated King of France. 

Marjorie-Ann Watts II

 

Cover illustration by Marjorie-Ann Watts from Catherine Storr's Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf.

Katharine Pyle

Mothers Nursery Tales 1918 Little Red Riding Hood illustrated by Katharine Pyle (1863-1938)

Marien Tillet

'Rouge Chaperon petit Le', by Marien Tillet, published 2012 a highly patterned, abstract silent book.