Between 1764 and 1767, a mysterious creature called the Beast ravaged the rural region of Gévaudan, in France. A hundred men, women and children have been victims of The Gevaudan’s beast. While many French people at the time assumed that the Beast was a wolf and many modern scholars agreed, some suggested that the Beast may not have been a wolf at all.
So what was it?
“Like a wolf, but not a wolf”
Illustration of the beast of Gevaudan, around 1765.
Mansell / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images
The Beast’s first recorded fatal attack occurred on June 30, 1764 when a 14-year-old shepherdess, Jeanne Boulet, kept a flock of sheep. Boulet was not the creature’s first victim. As historian Jay M. Smith writes in Gévaudan monsters, about two months ago, a young woman who looked after the cattle was attacked by a creature “like a wolf, but not a wolf” but ran away because the herd defended it.
The attacks continued throughout the summer and into the fall, according to George M. Eberhart’s 2002 book, Mysterious creatures: a guide to cryptozoology. France was then in crisis, on the eve of the Seven Years’ War. The nation had lost battles against Prussia and the British and Louis XV had lost overseas colonies. The Beast offered a perfect foil to rally – and there was no shortage of reports in the press on encounters with the animal.
the fierce beast (ferocious beast) partially attacked and ate the women and youths, but single adult men were also targets. There were so many attacks that some speculated that there were actually two or more beasts.
The terrified population of Gévaudan did not remain inactive – and individual stories of bravery captivated the public. As Smith writes, bonuses were offered and hunters scoured the countryside in search of the creature. On October 8, 1764, a few hours after a mutilation, the Beast was seen at the Château de la Baume, tracking down a shepherd. The hunters followed the animal in the woods of the estate and rinsed it in the open air. The hunters fired a musket fire at the creature, but after a fall, the Beast rose and fled.
King Louis XV sends hunters
A statue of Marie-Jeanne Valet fighting the beast of Gévaudan in France.
Filou-France / Getty Images
Even the children were celebrated for having faced the Beast. On January 12, 1765, the Beast attacked Jacques Portefaix, 10, and a group of seven friends aged eight to twelve. However, Portefaix conducted a counterattack with sticks chasing the creature. The children are rewarded by Louis XV and Portefaix receives an education paid for by the crown.
The heroism of children prompted the court of King Louis XV to send royal hunters to destroy the Beast. There were now 6,000-delivered premium over the creature’s head. The story of the Beast, meanwhile, spread and was covered in newspapers from Boston to Brussels, becoming one of the first media sensations in history.
Among the most notable tales of bravery was the fact that Marie-Jeanne Valet, aged 19 or 20, was attacked by the Beast on August 11, 1765 while crossing the Desges River with her sister. Armed with a bayonet attached to a pole, Valet impales the beast’s chest. The creature fled, but Valet became known as “the Amazon” and the “Maid of Gévaudan”.
A large wolf is shot by the king’s arms bearer
On September 20, 1765, François Antoine, the bearer of the king’s rifle, 71 years old, and his nephew shot a large wolf near an abbey in Chazes, which was supposed to be the Beast. Antoine received money and titles and the animal’s corpse was stuffed and sent to the royal court.
But attacks resumed in December, according to an account in the 1898 volume of Parisian Illustrated Review. This time, the Beast looked different, at least behaviorally. Where the creature had previously been afraid of cattle, this time it showed no fear. Is it then a second beast?
The royal court chose to ignore these new attacks, insisting that Antoine had killed the creature. Finally, a sudden explosion of attacks in early June 1767 forced a local nobleman, the Marquis of Apcher, to organize a hunt. On June 19, one of the hunters, a local man named Jean Chastel, killed a wolf on the slopes of Mont Mouchet.
An autopsy of the animal revealed human remains inside, and the animal had characteristics other than the wolf as described by the witnesses. The attacks ended, but while it was assumed that the sacked Chastel beast was the Beast, doubts remained that it was indeed a wolf.
Description and behavior of the beast
Eyewitnesses have always described the beast as something other than a typical wolf. He was as big as a calf or sometimes a horse. His coat was reddish gray with a long tail, solid as a panther. The head and legs were short-haired and the color of a deer. He had a black band on his back and “claws” on his feet. Many drawings of the Beast at the time endowed it with lupine characteristics.
Witnesses described the Beast as an ambush hunter who tracked its prey and grabbed it by the throat. The wounds found on the bodies were generally in the head and limbs and the remains of 16 victims were reportedly beheaded. The creature prowled in the evening and in the morning.
Theories of the beast
Historians, scientists, pseudoscientists and conspiracy theorists have all proposed theories about what the Beast was. Among the suspects: a Eurasian wolf, an armored war dog, a striped hyena, a lion, a kind of prehistoric predator, a werewolf, a hybrid dog-wolf and a human.
Among the candidates, the most fanciful is the werewolf. Smith points out that Chastel allegedly used a silver bullet to kill the wolf, thereby fueling the mythology of the werewolf.
It is also unrealistic that the Beast was an extinct prehistoric predator such as a dog bear, a fearsome wolf or a Hyaenodon. The idea that such a large animal escapes detection for thousands to millions of years is simply too implausible, Smith argues.
Others have suggested that a human serial killer may be responsible for the attacks. Many victims of the Beasts would have been beheaded, which few animals could do. Although it is unlikely that a killer would walk for victims in broad daylight wearing a beastly costume, those who support this theory believe that the human killer used an animal to commit the crimes. What was the animal? Some have speculated that it was an armored war dog, which explains its strange appearance and why it ignored musket fire.
Striped hyena?
Certain representations of the Beast – and of the animal killed by Chastel – suggest that it resembled a striped hyena. It is possible that a striped hyena was found in a person’s private operation and then escaped. Not being from France, he would have seemed unusual. However, striped hyenas are not known to attack humans.
Lion?
Karl-Hans Taake, biologist and author of The Gévaudan tragedy: the disastrous campaign of a deported “beast” contends that the beast may be an immature male lion. Like the hyena, it is possible that a lion has escaped from captivity. The Beast was said to have been an ambush hunter who grabbed prey by the neck and could possibly behead a victim. A lion, Taake argues, could exhibit these predatory behaviors.
Lions are known to exploit humans for food, such as the famous case of the Tsavo lions, in which a pair of lions killed more than 130 victims in less than a year. Another supporting fact is that the Beast’s territory, about 56 by 50 miles, lines up with the typical range of a lion.
Eyewitnesses in France at the time were probably not familiar with living lions and what they knew about them came from highly stylized images. A subadult male does not have a fully developed mane and sometimes has a Mohawk-like band flowing over his back. This matches descriptions of the beast by eyewitnesses, says Taake. A hunter at the time, Captain Jean Baptiste Duhamel, wrote: “You will no doubt think, like me, that it is a monster [hybrid], whose father is a lion. What his mother was remained to be seen. “
A wolf?
One of the theories believed to be the most credible is that wolves have perpetuated the attacks. As Smith says Smithsonian, “Gévaudan had a serious wolf infestation.” He believes that large lone wolves were attacking individual communities across the region or that it was a pack of wolves.
Smith claims that many of the fantastic qualities attributed to the Beast were induced by the clergy who aroused fear among the population that God was punishing the French for their defeat during the Seven Years’ War. For hunters, killing the beast was a way to recover the lost honor of France.
Wolves are native to the region and had attacked humans before – some statistics show that wolves attacked humans 9,000 times in France between the 17th and 19th centuries. In most cases, these types of attacks were rabid wolves.
There are a few potential flaws in the wolf theory, including the frequency of the Beast’s deadly attacks, suggesting that it was not a single rabid wolf. Furthermore, none of his victims appear to have contracted rabies, which suggests that their attacker was not carrying rabies either.
Although there are strong voices arguing for multiple theories about the identity of the Beast of Gevaudan, all admit that the truth will never be fully known. Without any genetic or forensic evidence, the beast of Gévaudan will forever remain a mystery.
