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
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: 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
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