Plague Paris was the biggest city in Europe, with a population of approximately 250,000 people. In autumn 1348 plague arrived in the city killing between 500-800 people per day, within 4 years, the Black Death epidemic would decimate a third of the Parisian population. Sometimes the dead were transported out to mass burial sites, other times unable to keep up with the abundance of corpses, they were simply thrown over the city wall. Wolves ate or dug up the dead and feasted on their remains giving them a taste for human meat. Relatives of sufferers fled Paris, hoping to escape the epidemic to the countryside. However unwittingly they were infected themselves and spread the disease throughout the country. In 1352, the Black Death epidemic finally came to an end. Within four years, the Great Plague had decimated between 50,000 and 80,000 Parisians - almost a third of the capital's population. As we know from recent experiences with Covid, such societal health disasters cause great instability and affect societies long after the infection has abated.
Mad King Charles VI who reigned from 1380-1422, had with increasing bouts of psychosis (now believed to be schizophrenia left a power vacuum the royal court fractured into corrupt factions trying to gain control of the regency and the kingdom's finances.
In 1407, John the Fearless (the Duke of Burgundy) ordered the brutal assassination of the King’s brother, Louis of Orléans, in the streets of Paris and this was the catalyst behind the bloody Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War which lasted from 1407–1435. This war was on top of the ongoing 100 year war which was a series of territorial, economic, and political conflicts between England and France 1337–1453.
Seeing that France's military leadership was so fractured King Henry V saw an opportunity to seise the French Crown. The English utterly crushed the main French army at the Battle of Agincourt. Thousands of high-ranking French nobles were killed or captured. Desperate and broken, the French court was forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Troyes (1420) which named Henry V of England as the rightful heir to the French throne. At this time northern France was entirely under English occupation.
Demobilised mercenaries and bandits from the wars formed vicious roaming gangs called Écorcheurs (literally meaning "skinners" or "flayers"). They stripped entire villages of food, livestock, and clothing, causing peasants to flee and leave fields abandoned.
Decades of intermittent fighting ruined international commerce, were economically devastating combined with heavy taxation to fund the wars, currency debasement, and a slow recovery from the Black Death, the population plunged and agricultural yields bottomed out, causing loss of livestock and starvation.
The harsh winter conditions and extended spring frosts repeatedly hit France throughout the 1430–1440 destroying vineyards, damaging winter grain crops, and freezing rivers. Failing crops and expensive food meant people were hungry sick and weak and so you have the perfect conditions for wolf attacks.
Between 1436 and 1440 sixty to eighty people were killed by wolves.
Above: Livre de la Chasse by Gaston Fébus 1430-1440
Between 1436 -1440 sixty to eighty people were killed. Courtaud, was caught in 10 November 1439, this wolf was said to have been responsible for more deaths than all the other wolves combined. When the animal was finally caught, it was placed in a wheelbarrow with its jaws held open and paraded through the city, the Parisian's rushed to see.
Of course the deaths and attacks did not end with Courtaud's capture. In December 1439, wolves killed four women near Paris. Several days later seventeen more people in the city were mauled, eleven of whom died of their injuries. In 1461, widespread wolf-hunts were conducted, and over a period of six months in that year, 227 wolves were officially killed in the viscounty of Paris.
