The Beast of Gévaudan I

Above is an18th 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 where the forces of nature had not been full 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 was unharmed.

The bloodthirsty 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, of around £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 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 and the arrival of a 'monster' killing French peasants could not have been at a worse time for the King, 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, nor 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 is no more.

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 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 Dr 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 the country 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 the recently defeated King of France.