Beast of Gévaudan
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-->The Beast of Gévaudan (French: La bête du Gévaudan) was a creature that terrorised the general area of the former province of Gévaudan (in today's Lozère département), in the Margeride Mountains in south-central France, from about 1764 to 1767. While a number of attacks took place, estimated to be about one-hundred victims, there has been debate regarding the identity of the culprit. The story is a popular target of conspiracy theorists, and some consider the creature to be the French equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster.
Attacks
The first attack that provided a description of the creature took place in May/June of 1764. A girl from Langogne was working a farm in the Forêt de Mercoire when she saw a large, wolflike animal charge from the trees in a straight line toward her. The farm's dogs retreated as the beast drew closer, until the bulls from the farm's herd of cattle menaced the creature enough to drive it back into the forest.
For the next three years attacks by the same beast occurred. It was described as being a wolflike creature the size of a cow with a wide chest, a long sinuous tail with a lion-like tuft of fur on the end, and a greyhound-like head with large, protruding fangs. It was also noted making huge leaps approaching thirty feet in length (from the tracks left). The victims were almost entirely children (of both sexes) and women.
While other authority figures failed to stop the slaughter, on January 12 1765, young Jacques Portefaix and six friends, attacked by the Beast, were able to put it to flight by staying grouped, and they all survived. Their heroic fight caught the attention of King Louis XV, who gave 300 pounds to Jacques and his six friends. The King then sent Jean-Charles-Marc-Antoine Vaumesle d'Enneval and the huntsman's son Jean-François, two of the best wolf hunters in France, to kill the beast.
The duo arrived on February 17 1765 in Clermont-Ferrand with eight bloodhounds specialized in wolf-hunting. They spent several months hunting wolves, believing them to be the real beast. The wolf killings lasted as long as the creature's attacks, over the general span of three years, and had no effect on reports of the beast or its killing.
They were replaced by François Antoine aka Antoine de Beauterne, the king's harquebus bearer and chief huntsman, who held the title of Great Louvetier (wolf hunter) of the realm and wore the Cross of Saint-Louis. He arrived in le Malzieu on June 22 1765.
On September 21 1765, Antoine killed a big gray wolf. The animal was 32 inches high, 5 feet, 7 and a half inches long, and weighed 130 pounds. All the people at the castle of the Besset agreed that this was quite a big wolf. Antoine officially stated: "We declare by the present report signed from our hand, we never saw a big wolf that could be compared to this one. Which is why we estimate this could be the fearsome beast that caused so much damages."
The wolf was stuffed and sent to Versailles where Antoine was received as a hero, receiving a large sum of money as well as lands, titles and awards.
However, on December 2 1765, the Beast attacked again in la Besseyre Saint Mary, severely injuring two children. Dozens more deaths followed.
The killing of the creature that eventually marked the end of the attacks is credited to a local hunter, Jean Chastel, at the Sogne d'Auvers.
Of note is the fact that the creature had a strange method of killing, often ignoring the usual areas targeted by predators (legs and throat to incapacitate and kill, respectively) and instead concentrating on the head, cutting it off and sometimes crushing it. It also seemed to have a particular taste for humans, as even when cattle and other farm animals were more easily attainable it often ignored them completely to attack the person tending them. There were differing reports on the beast itself, which was sometimes reportedly seen with a man and was several times reported to be with another beast, or with young.
Explanations
Various explanations were offered at the time of the attacks. They ranged from exaggerated accounts of wolf attacks, to a loup-garou (werewolf), all the way to the beast being a punishment from God, to being an unholy creature summoned by a sorcerer.
Current opinions offer up the interesting theory that the attacks were actually a serial killer, or group of serial killers, using wolf attacks to cover their own murders. Also sometimes mentioned are the theories that the beast may have been a Dire Wolf, a marginally larger, extinct relative of modern wolves; as well as the theory that the animal may have simply been an escaped captive exotic animal such as a hyena or lion.
It is to be noted that there is no proof of human involvement, and that all descriptions of the animals killed point to canines (wolves, dogs, or hybrids).
Yet another theory is that the creature was a specially bred wolfdog hybrid used for hunting, such as those bred and used by the Spanish in the 16th century.
Certain cryptozoologists believe that it may have been a mesonychid.
In the arts and popular culture
- Robert Louis Stevenson travelled through the region in 1878 and described the legend in his book Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes:
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 Gévaudan 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. And yet, when he was shot and sent to Versailles, behold! a common wolf, and even small for that.
- The cosmic horror fiction writer Clark Ashton Smith was inspired to write "The Beast of Averoigne" and other short stories set in a ancient Auvergne.
- The legend surrounding the attacks spawned a movie, Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001), which, while based on the records of the creature, also took several creative liberties in order to make the story more entertaining. Generating positive reviews and record business, it is primarily fictional.
- A barely more accurate version of the historic events was shown in the TV-film La bête du Gévaudan, France 2003, first aired by the station ARTE in 2005, directed by Patrick Volson.
External links
- [Occultopedia: Beast of Gévaudan]
- [Shadow of the Beast]
- [The Cryptid Zoo: Beast of Gévaudan]
- [Beaste of Gévauland, a show by Théâtre S'Amourailles]
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