Beast of Gvaudan

The Beast of Gvaudan (French: La Bte du Gvaudan; IPA: [la bt dy evod ], Occitan: La Bstia
de Gavaudan) is the historical name associated with
the man-eating gray wolf, dog or wolfdog which terrorised the former province of Gvaudan (modern-day
dpartement of Lozre and part of Haute-Loire), in the
Margeride Mountains in south-central France between
1764 and 1767.[2] The attacks, which covered an area
stretching 90 by 80 kilometres (56 by 50 mi), were said
to have been committed by a beast or beasts that had
formidable teeth and immense tails according to contemporary eyewitnesses.
Victims were often killed by having their throats torn out.
The Kingdom of France used a considerable amount of
manpower and money to hunt the animals; including the
resources of several nobles, soldiers, civilians, and a number of royal huntsmen.[2]
The number of victims diers according to sources. In
1987, one study estimated there had been 210 attacks;
resulting in 113 deaths and 49 injuries; 98 of the victims
killed were partly eaten.[2] However, other sources claim
it killed between 60 to 100 adults and children, as well as An 18th-century print showing a woman defending herself from
injuring more than 30.[2]
the Beast of Gvaudan.

Over the later months of 1764, more attacks were reported throughout the region. Very soon terror had
gripped the populace because the beast was repeatedly
preying on lone men, women and children as they tended
livestock in the forests around Gvaudan. Reports note
that the beast seemed to only target the victims head or
neck regions.

Description

Descriptions of the time vary, but generally the beast was

said to look like a wolf but be about as big as a calf. It
had a large dog-like head with small straight ears, a wide
chest, and a large mouth which exposed very large teeth.
The beasts fur was said to be red in color but its back was
By late December 1764 rumors had begun circulating
streaked with black.[3]
that there might be a pair of beasts behind the killings.
This was because there had been such a high number of
attacks in such a short space of time, many had appeared
2 History
to have been recorded and reported at the same time.
Some contemporary accounts suggest the creature had
been seen with another such animal, while others thought
2.1 Beginnings
the beast was with its young.
The Beast of Gvaudan carried out its rst recorded attack in the early summer of 1764. A young woman, who
was tending cattle in the Mercoire forest near Langogne in
the eastern part of Gvaudan, saw the beast come at her.
However the bulls in the herd charged the beast, keeping
it at bay, they then drove it o after it attacked a second
time. Shortly afterwards the rst ocial victim of the
beast was recorded; 14-year-old Janne Boulet was killed
near the village of Les Hubacs near the town of Langogne.

On January 12, 1765, Jacques Portefaix and seven friends

were attacked by the Beast. After several attacks, they
drove it away by staying grouped together. The encounter eventually came to the attention of Louis XV,
who awarded 300 livres to Portefaix and another 350
livres to be shared among his companions. The king also
directed that Portefaix be educated at the states expense.
He then decreed that the French state would help nd and
kill the beast.
1

2.2

4 DEPICTIONS IN FICTION

Royal intervention

3 Theories

An 18th-century engraving of Antoine de Beauterne slaying the

wolf of Chazes.

Three weeks later Louis XV sent two professional wolfhunters, Jean Charles Marc Antoine Vaumesle d'Enneval
and his son Jean-Franois, to Gvaudan. They arrived in
Clermont-Ferrand on February 17, 1765, bringing with
them eight bloodhounds which had been trained in wolfhunting. Over the next four months the pair hunted for
Eurasian wolves believing them to be the beast. However, as the attacks continued, they were replaced in June
1765 by Franois Antoine (also wrongly named Antoine
de Beauterne), the kings arquebus bearer and Lieutenant
of the Hunt who arrived in Le Malzieu on June 22.

The wolf shot by Franois Antoine on 21 September 1765, displayed at the court of Louis XV

According to modern scholars, public hysteria at the

time of the attacks contributed to widespread myths that
supernatural beasts roamed Gvaudan, but deaths attributed to a beast were more likely the work of a number of wolves or packs of wolves.[5][6] In 2001 the French
naturalist Michel Louis proposed that the red-colored
masti belonging to Jean Chastel sired the beast and its
resistance to bullets may have been due to it wearing the
armoured hide of a young boar thus also accounting for
the unusual colour.[7] In reality the Beast of Gvaudan
was not one, but several man-eating wolves acting in isolation. When they were all killed there were no more human victims. The problem of attacks by wolves in those
years was very serious, not only in France but throughout
Europe, with tens of thousands of deaths in the eighteenth
century alone.[8]

On September 20, 1765, Antoine had killed his third

large grey wolf measuring 80 cm (31 in) high, 1.7 m (5 ft
7 in) long, and weighing 60 kilograms (130 lb). The wolf,
which was named Le Loup de Chazes after the nearby
Abbaye des Chazes, was said to have been quite large
for a wolf. Antoine ocially 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 damage. The animal was further identied as 4 Depictions in ction
the culprit by attack survivors who recognised the scars
on its body inicted by victims defending themselves.[2] 4.1 Literature
The wolf was stued and sent to Versailles where Antoine
was received as a hero, receiving a large sum of money as
the rst literary reference to the 'Beast Of Gvauwell as titles and awards.
dan' occurs in lie Berthet's 1858 novel La Bte du
Gvaudan [translated as The Beast of Gevaudan
However, on December 2, 1765, another beast severely
but not currently available in English], in which the
injured two men. A dozen more deaths are reported to
killings are attributed to both a wolf and a man who
have followed attacks by La Besseyre-Saint-Mary.
believes himself to be a werewolf.

2.3

Final attacks

The killing of the creature that eventually marked the end

of the attacks is credited to a local hunter named Jean
Chastel, who shot it during a hunt organized by a local nobleman, the Marquis d'Apcher, on June 19, 1767. Writers later introduced the idea that Chastel shot the creature
with a blessed silver bullet of his own manufacture and
upon being opened, the animals stomach was shown to
contain human remains.[4]

in 1904, the author and journalist Robert Sherard faithfully revisited Berthets idea with his novel
Wolves: An Old Story Retold which once again featured both a werewolf and a huge savage wolf. lie
Berthets La Bte du Gvaudan is referenced in the
introduction as being the source of the story.
Robert Louis Stevenson travelled through the region in 1878 and described the incident in his book
Travels with a Donkey in the Cvennes, in which he
claims that at least one of the creatures was a wolf:

3
For this was the land of the evermemorable Beast, the Napoleon Bonaparte of
wolves. What a career was his! He lived ten
months at free quarters in Gvaudan 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 kings high-road, and chaise and
outrider eeing before him at the gallop. He
was placarded like a political oender, and ten
thousand francs were oered for his head. And
yet, when he was shot and sent to Versailles, behold! a common wolf, and even small for that.
In the Patricia Briggs novel Hunting Ground, the
Beast is in fact Jean Chastel, who is a werewolf.

4.2

Film and television

The beast featured in an episode of Animal X suggesting it was a wolf-dog hybrid that was trained to
attack people.
The French television lm La bte du Gvaudan
(2003),[9] directed by Patrick Volson was based on
the attacks of the Beast
Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001),[10] directed by
Christophe Gans, is a popular feature lm based
on the legend. The lm took several creative liberties in order to make the story more interesting to
a general audience. Rather than a wolf or wolf-dog
crossbreed, the movie portrays the creature as the
ospring of a lion crossbred with another unknown
big cat, equipped with armor to make it seem more
threatening. The Beast is the instrument of the lms
eponymous secret organisation, which attempts to
undermine public condence in the king and ultimately take over the country by stating that the Beast
is a divine punishment for the Kings indulgence of
the modern embrace of science over religion.
In the 2010 remake The Wolfman the wolf-headed
cane given to Lawrence Talbot was acquired, according to the previous owner, in the city of Gvaudan.
In October 2009, the History Channel aired a documentary called The Real Wolfman which argued
that the beast was an exotic animal in the form of
a striped hyena, a long-haired species of hyena now
extinct in Europe.[11]
In the MTV drama Teen Wolf, the character Allison
learns in the sixth episode of the rst season that her
werewolf-hunting family was responsible for slaughtering the Beast of Gvaudan. The same beast is the
main focus of the second half of the series fth season.[12]

5 See also
List of wolves
Wolf attacks on humans
Wolf hunting
Wolf of Ansbach
Wolf of Sarlat
Wolf of Soissons
Wolves of Paris
Wolves of Prigord
Hell Hound
Cerberus
List of cryptids

6 References
[1] Woodward, Ian (1979). The Werewolf Delusion. p. 256.
ISBN 0-448-23170-0.
[2] The Fear of Wolves: A Review of Wolf Attacks on Humans (PDF). Norsk Institutt for Naturforskning. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
[3] Pourcher, Pierre (1889) Translated by Brockis, Derek
The Beast of Gevaudan AuthorHouse, 2006, p.5 ISBN
9781467014632
[4] Jackson, Robert (1995). Witchcraft and the Occult. Devizes, Quintet Publishing. p. 25. ISBN 1-85348-888-7.
[5] Smith, Jay M. (2011). Monsters of the Gvaudan. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 6.
ISBN 0-674-04716-8.
[6] Thompson, Richard H. (1991). Wolf-Hunting in France
in the Reign of Louis XV: The Beast of the Gvaudan. p.
367. ISBN 0-88946-746-3.
[7] Louis, Michel (2001).
La Bte Du Gvaudan
L'innocence Des Loups. Librairie Acadmique Perrin.
ISBN 978-2-262-01739-2.
[8] The man-eater of Gvaudan: when the serial killer is an
animal, by Giovanni Todaro, 2014, Lulu Com, 539 pages,
ISBN 9781291503401
[9] Patrick Volson (Director) (2003). La Bte du Gvaudan
(Motion picture).
[10] Christophe Gans (Director) (2001). Le Pacte des Loups
(Motion picture).
[11] The Real Wolfman. History Alive. Season 4. Episode
16. History. Retrieved 2009-10-29.
[12] Massabrook, Nicole (February 24, 2016). "'Teen Wolf'
Season 5B Spoilers: Episode 19 Synopsis Released; What
Will Happen In The Beast Of Beacon Hills?". International Business Times. Retrieved March 9, 2016.

External links
A comprehensive history on the Beast of Gvaudan
Robert Darnton, The Wolf Mans Revenge, The
New York Review of Books, June 9, 2011; review of
Monsters of the Gvaudan: The Making of a Beast
by Jay M. Smith (Harvard University Press, 2011).
Multi language site of the Beast of Gvaudan.

EXTERNAL LINKS

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

8.1

Text

Beast of Gvaudan Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_of_G%C3%A9vaudan?oldid=718504760 Contributors: Bryan Derksen,

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8.2

Images

File:Antoine_de_Beauterne.jpg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Antoine_de_Beauterne.jpg
License: Public domain Contributors: Reproduced in numerous books, websites, journals, etc.
Original artist: Unknown<a
href='//www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4233718'
title='wikidata:Q4233718'><img
alt='wikidata:Q4233718'
src='https:
//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Wikidata-logo.svg/20px-Wikidata-logo.svg.png'
width='20'
height='11'
srcset='https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Wikidata-logo.svg/30px-Wikidata-logo.svg.png
1.5x,
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data-le-height='590' /></a>
File:Commons-logo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Gevaudanwolf.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Gevaudanwolf.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: The London Magazine, vol. xxxiv, May 1765; reprinted in Montague Summers, Werewolf (1933) Original artist: AF
File:Question_book-new.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Question_book-new.svg License: Cc-by-sa-3.0
Contributors:
Created from scratch in Adobe Illustrator. Based on Image:Question book.png created by User:Equazcion Original artist:
Tkgd2007
File:Wolf_of_Chazes.jpg Source:
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title='wikidata:Q4233718'><img
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8.3

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