The Beast of Gevaudan
Euan Cameron
Between 1764 and 1767, as the reign of Louis XV was drawing to its end, the people of the Upper Gevaudan, a remote and hilly district of south-western France, were terrorised and driven to dementia by a ferocious wolf-like creature that roamed their lands and cruelly attacked, mutilated and devoured their children. Exaggerated accounts of the beast's forays spread throughout France and so great was the outcry that the King himself ordered hunts to be organised for the creature's destruc- tion.
Opinion differs as to precisely what monster, in biological terms, was responsi- ble for the mangled corpses of small children strewn over the hills of the Margaride. Were there several wolves of ex- ceptional size? Or was it some sort of cross between wolf and hyena? Was it a werewolf perhaps? The various eye-witness accounts agree more or less in description: a letter in the Gazette de France of 23 November 1764 describes 'a fierce beast that has already devoured some twenty peo- ple, mostly children and particularly young girls ... the animal is much larger than a Wolf. Its paws are clawed. Its fur is reddish, its head huge with a long snout like a greyhound and its back is striped with black, its vast jaws armed with teeth so sharp that heads have been severed from the body as if by a razor. It has a slow loping walk but runs in leaps and its speed and agility are amazing. Within a short space of time it is seen two or three leagues away. It ap- proaches its prey in a prowling position, ap- pearing no bigger than a fox. At one or two Paces' distance it stands on its back legs and leaps on its victim, which it always attacks at the back or side of the neck. It is frightened °oIY of bulls, which put it to flight.' For some it was a hyena the size of a donkey escaped from a zoo, or a large ape since the beast was seen standing on hind legs; a dor- sal ridge ran the length of its back; its back legs were hooved like a horse and its front Paws were clawed. For others it was a phan- tom unaffected by knives or gun-shot. The Upper Gevaudan lies to the north of the department of the Lozere. During the eighteenth century it was a particularly backward area, its peasant population ek- M8 a living out of the generally poor ground that barely provided grazing for their cattle and sheep. In the early years of the century the wars of the Camisards had broken out t° the south of the province, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes having driven the Huguenots to take refuge in the mountain fortresses of the Cevennes. Terrible famines had devastated the area and religious Persecution still continued; to this day it re- mains a region strong in its Protestant
precepts. Driving south on the Route Na- tionale 9 shortly after Saint Flour you can see the range of hills called la Margaride to the east. They are unspectacular and there is a mournful quality about them; they are well covered with forests. It was here that the beast roamed for three years from June 1764 when the first of the many attacks was reported. It was first seen near Langogne by a woman tending her cattle. No harm was done on this occasion but the next month parts of a small girl's body were found nearby and during the year a succession of attacks followed which generally resulted in death. Later that year a company of dragoons was sent in from Langogne to tackle the animal. At Christmas the Bishop of Mende attributed the suffering to a monstrous creature unleashed by the Lord on a sinful people; God's vengeance for the sins of the parents was being wreaked on their children. If this was a scourge sent from above what point was there in hunting it?
Between the 7th and 11th of February 1765 virtually half the population of the Gevaudan and its neighbouring parishes took part in a series of hunts organised by M. Duhamel, the officer in charge of the dragoons, but although the beast was sighted the scent was lost. The Gazette de France of 22 March 1765 gave an account of the attack on a woman and her three young children from a village near Saugnes. Such was the woman's bravery that she was able to ward the beast off two of the children while the third was being dragged away and savagely mauled. Fortunately a nearby shepherd heard the cries and set his large mongrel dog on to the monster and, although it was no match for the beast, it provided sufficient pause for the shepherd to snatch away the child. Louis XV ordered that 300 !lures should be paid to the woman 'in consideration of the supernatural courage she had shown'.
Unrest and anger grew among the peasants as the victims of the creature con- tinued to mount. The State of Languedoc put a price on the beast's head. Hunters, not soldiers, were needed and later that year the services of a certain M. Desnevals from Argentan in Normandy, renowned for hav- ing hunted and killed several hundred wolves, were called upon in dire emergency. M. Desnevals, his son and his hunters, began their expedition that spring and the archives contain many letters from Desnevals giving accounts of the beast's movements, but despite several large wolves being killed the attacks continued. By June, however, Desnevals had been replaced by Antoine de Beauterne, who was none less than the King's own gamekeeper, and who brought with him fourteen marksmen from the King's estates at Versailles and Saint Germain. They cannot have found the rug- ged hills of Gevaudan quite to their taste; they were unable to kill a single wolf in three months. 'If the peasants had guns', de Beauterne wrote in a letter to the Governor of the Auvergne (21 August 1765), 'the Beast would be destroyed.' But they were virtually unprotected. On 8 October 1765, however, the Gazette de France an- nounced that the creature was dead, having
been shot and killed by Antoine de Beauterne on 21 September at Chazes, a considerable distance away from the scene of most of the beast's attacks. A very large wolf was certainly killed and as further proof its body iwas delivered to Clermont a few days later, but it appears that this was only an attempt to pacify the people of Gevaudan and to impress the Court, for the beast (or one just like it) continued to maraud.But despite the continuing number of deaths the creature, officially, no longer existed. Attacks by wolves were reported in the press from other parts of France but there were no more references to any one monster-beast or to the number of deaths of children in the Gevaudan during March, April and May, 1767.
The real credit for the slaying of the
creature should probably go to one Jean Chastel. On 19 June 1767 a great hunt was arranged by a local nobleman, the Baron d'Apcher. During the course of that day an extremely large wolf was shot by Chastel. Reddish in colour, it weighed 109 tbs and measured over six feet from nose to tail. From that day on the attacks stopped and no further deaths or mutilations were reported.
La bete de Gevaudan lives on, however in legend only today, but it was within living memory at the time that Robert Louis Stevenson made his celebrated Travels with a Donkey among parts of Gevaudan in 1878:
`For this was the land of the ever- memorable BEAST, the Napoleon Bonaparte of wolves. What a career was his! He lived ten months at free quarters in Gevaudan and Vivarais; he ate women and children and "shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty"; he pursued armed horsemen; he has been seen at broad noonday chasing a post-chaise and outrider along the king's high-road, and chaise and outrider fleeing before him at the gallop. He was placarded like a political offender, and ten thousand francs were offered for his head.'
Over two hundred years later the legends have faded but the Beast's name is still remembered, even if it is only by children whose parents invoke him in dire warning to behave or else
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