The Beast of Gévaudan, 1764-67

Though originally this article was part of the Trials section of my old website, I decided to put it into a different category here due to it not being, strictly-speaking, a usual werewolf trial.

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The case of the Beast of Gévaudan is one that to this day baffles many cryptozoologists – it features an animal similar to a wolf, but the size of a cow, which terrorised the French district of Gévaudan (today’s Lozčre) for three years, from 1764 until 1767. The small province, situated in the mountains of Margeride in mid-southern France near such towns as Langogne and Mende, was haunted by the beast for the first time in 1764.

That month, a young woman was attacked by a large, wolf-like monster in Forét de Merçoire near Langogne. She was one of a few people who survived the encounter with the beast. In October of the same year, two huntsmen approached the creature and fired at it at a close range. The animal was shot four times, but appeared to have not suffered any physical damage. Captain Duhamel, who led nearly sixty soldiers, began the hunt for the monster, wounded it a few times, but did not manage to kill it.

In 1765, king Louie XV sent an experienced wolf hunter by the name of Denneval to Gévaudan so that he would put an end to the beast. Before Denneval tracked down the creature, a man named Chaumette had spotted the animal in the vicinity of his home near St. Chely. He and his two brothers shot the beast twice, but it would still not be killed. Afterwards, in June of 1765, Denneval abandoned his search for the beast, having failed to track it down. 

A month earlier, king Louie had also sent his commander of weapons transport, Antoine de Beauterne, to Gévaudan. On September 21^st , three months after Denneval had given up his search, de Beauterne commenced his hunt in Béal Ravine, near Pommier. He succeeded in killing something that he had considered to have been the famous beast. It was an unusually big wolf that measured six-feet in length (circa 1.8 metres). The animal's body was then put on display at the Natural History Museum in Paris and remained there until the beginning of the 20^th century.

However, despite de Beauterne's efforts, something was still killing people. In the summer of 1767, hundreds of villagers made pilgrimages to the Notre-Dame de Beaulieu cathedral in the vicinity of Mount Chauvet to pray to God for salvation from the monster. They regarded it as divine punishment for their sins or even a werewolf (loup-garou). One of the pilgrims was Jean Chastel, who was carrying a gun and three baptized bullets.

On June 19^th 1767, a local noble organised a great hunt attended by three hundred people. Chastel lay in wait for the monster in Sogne d’Aubert. When what he thought was the beast appeared, he fired the three baptised bullets at it and the monster was finally slain.

In the end, what was the monster, really? French villagers believed that it was a kind of demon, but at the same time English scientists concluded that it was a cross between a tiger and a hyena (which, we now know, would not be possible, biologically-speaking). Others spoke of a wolverine, a bear, even a baboon. However, in recent times the remains of the animal killed by Chastel were found in the storage of the Natural History Museum in Paris – even though at the time the beast was classified as a wolf, a zoologist Franz Jullien studied what remained of the creature and concluded it to have been a striped hyena (Hyena hyena), which normally live in Africa. While there can be observed a specific similarity of the striped hyena to a wolf (especially to 18^th-century European folk who had probably never seen a real-life hyena in person before), it has a closer relation to a bear than a wolf, like other hyenas. The striped hyena is also the second-smallest subspecies of the family (other being the aardwolf), measuring at most 130 cm length, 80 cm in height, and weighing around 55 kg. Contemporary descriptions of the beast vary, but it was said to have reddish fur with a streak of black on its back - this description, in turn, brings to mind the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), which, by the way, is a wolf only in name. Whatever the creature might have been, it is yet another mystery how the animal got to France in the first place and how it suddenly started to freely roam its wilderness. The claim that it was immune to bullets can also be attributed to the people’s lack of sharpshooting skills. However, much of this case remains – and will continue to remain – a mystery as to its true nature.

That said, nowadays it is presumed that – due to the vast area in which the attacks took place – that the famous beast was not a single animal, but a couple of wolves or even wolf packs that resorted to hunting humans who were increasingly encroaching on their territories. Coupled with the already-existing mass hysteria concerning wolves and wolf attacks during the 18^th century, it is possible that such isolated incidents started being perceived as the work of a solitary, demonic monster. This theory is reinforced by the fact that with the drastic reduction of the wolf population in France during that time, the attacks on humans ceased.

A monument was erected in the village of Auvers to honour those who fought against the beast.

The story of the Beast of Gévaudan to this day remains deeply-rooted in European culture. It was the premise of the 2001 French movie Le Pacte des Loups (The Brotherhood of Wolves). Allusions to the tale can also be found in Fred Vargas's 2004 crime novel Seeking Whom He May Devour. In 2010, in the remake of The Wolfman, the iconic walking stick adorned with a wolf's head is said to have been purchased in Gévaudan. And in 2021, the German power-metal band Powerwolf released a song titled Beast of Gévaudan promoting their new album, Call of the Wild.