The Beast of Gévaudan

June 1764. A young woman was tending cattle in the Mercoire Forest near Langogne. A beast came at her, "like a wolf, yet not a wolf." Her herd defended her.

30 June 1764. Jeanne Boulet, aged 14, was killed near the village of Les Hubacs, in the parish of Saint-Étienne-de-Lugdarès. She was buried the next day, without sacraments. The register said she had been killed by "the ferocious beast." Because the entry already names the beast, commentators infer she was not the first victim. Only the first one declared.

In October 1764 M. de Lacoste described an animal bigger than a wolf. Reddish, with a black stripe along its back. An extremely large head, a pointed muzzle, a very long tail. "When it is after someone," he wrote, "it bristles and becomes enormous." Captain Jean-Baptiste Boulanger Duhamel of the Clermont-Prince dragoons gave it the size of a yearling bull, paws as strong as a bear's with six claws, a "breast as wide as a horse" and a "body as long as a leopard's." Its eyes were large and sparkling. Witnesses said it could walk on its hind feet and that its hide could repel bullets.

12 January 1765. Near Chanaleilles, Jacques Portefaix, about 10, led seven children against the Beast. It bit one boy's cheek, then seized Joseph Panafieu by the arm. Louis XV paid for Portefaix's education. On 11 August 1765, at Paulhac, Marie-Jeanne Vallet stabbed its chest with her bayonet. The animal rushed into the river, rolled 3 to 4 times, then left across the fields.

The king offered rewards and sent troops. Duhamel's dragoons failed. So did the d'Ennevals, Normandy wolf-hunters who reached Clermont-Ferrand on 17 February 1765 with eight bloodhounds. Then came François Antoine, the king's arquebus-bearer.

In September 1765 he killed a large grey wolf near the royal abbey of Les Chazes. Survivors identified it as the Beast. The Wolf of Chazes was stuffed and shown at Versailles, and the crown declared the matter closed. Two months later, the beast returned.

19 June 1767. The Marquis d'Apcher organised a hunt on the slopes of Mont Mouchet. At La Sogne d'Auvers, a local hunter, Jean Chastel, shot an animal. The next day the royal notary Roch Étienne Marin described the carcass.

It resembled a wolf "only in its tail and hindquarters," with a large white heart-shaped mark on its chest. Dr Boulanger, surgeon of Saugues, performed the necropsy. The results were consistent with a large wolf or wolf-dog. The attacks stopped. A 1987 study counted 210 attacks, 113 deaths and 49 injuries.

Historians Jay M. Smith and Jean-Marc Moriceau see one or more man-eating wolves. The Italian wolf has been named the most likely candidate. Smith also reads the Beast as a media creation, set against the aftermath of the Seven Years' War and a new press appetite for sensational news. Karl-Hans Taake argues for a subadult male lion, citing the tufted tail and resistance to gunshots, and in 2023 called the Marin report questionable. The silver bullets cast from medals of the Virgin Mary were a literary invention by Henri Pourrat. Chastel praying before he fired is not supported by contemporary reports.

Robert Louis Stevenson called the region "the land of the ever-memorable BEAST, the Napoleon Bonaparte of wolves." Christophe Gans turned the story into Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001). In 1995 a stele to Jean Chastel by Philippe Kaeppelin went up at La Besseyre-Saint-Mary. At Auvers, a statue of Marie-Jeanne Vallet shares the village with a bronze Beast.