What was the beast of Gevaudan?

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Too many horrors occurred, such as what happened to Madame Merle. She had her eyes scratched out and La Bête spat a stream of her blood over approaching rescuers. No 'toujours la politesse' that time.

On 21st June 1765 - the witches Sabbath, when the weather was warm enough for the naughtier country folk to dance naked round bonfires, she killed two people and savaged a third. Was this yet more evidence of her apparent sensitivity to Gothic atmosphere - she was often reported in places with supernatural associations - or did she just fancy a hot takeaway with no French dressing? Either way, she came back for seconds and thirds to go.

Also in 1765 - her busiest year - the case occurred at Javols where a father, a tenant farmer of good reputation, was bound and imprisoned by the fiery Captain Duhamel for failing immediately to report an attack to the authorities. He had delayed doing this only to attend to his child, whose larynx had been bloodily torn open - a specialty of La Bête - and to nurse his seriously ill mother. Many attacks remained unreported for fear of becoming involved with ponderous and ineffective bureaucracies, rather like on housing estates today.

Six year old Marguerite Lèbre was killed in front of six firm witnesses, all testifying to Curate Gibergue at la Pauze, Lorcières, who also recorded reports of a smaller boar-like Bête seen 3 days later. These records of sturdy porcine or feline beasts in addition to our rakish, wickedly graceful wolf-like lady are too frequent to ignore and add another dimension to the mystery. Another odd fact is that some measurements of distances between her footprints showed she could make leaps of over 28 feet on level ground. If true, this weighs in favor of the athletic build rather than the stocky one. Reserve judgment on this point but favour the fast-rakish rather than the sturdy-porcine.

The three most famous fights against La Bête were Portefaix, the schoolboy, Marie Jeanne Valet (La Pucelle), the maid and La Femme Jouve, the mother. The most heroic was that by the puny Madame Jeanne Jouve on 9th March 1765 at Fau de Brion, where she fought to protect 3 of her 6 children using only her bare hands and rocks snatched up from the ground. Madame Jouve was seriously injured and one child died. The King gave her a reward of 300 livres. The incident was vividly described thus; "The skin of his skull was falling to the right, his cheek was torn, his lip and nose torn away to the root, he died within 3 days." The same evening La Bête devoured a boy at Chanaleilles and was seen again the next day at Estival.

These events caused great consternation throughout Gévaudan and Auvergne. The floor of one meeting hall collapsed from the sheer weight of people crowding in, volunteering to join a hunt for her.

(image from linternaute.com FR)

There was the case of the girl, her little brother having been snatched away, who bravely rushed into the wood after him and found him peacefully lying there on his back, apparently intact but in fact lacking liver, entrails and blood.

The girl who cried to warn her sister, "There's a big wolf behind you", turned and ran, only to see her sister's head bowling along the ground. The girl lost her mind.

The little boy who, on 21st July 1765 went to fetch the family cows from their walled meadow near the village of Auvert and simply never returned. At the time La Bête was being sought locally by the wily aristocrat M. Antoine, the King's Gun bearer, who posted his hunters in pairs on paths all over the district. There has always been a question mark over his policy. Why did he post guards at night, when, contrary to the behaviour of most werwolfish monsters, La Bête usually attacked in the daytime? The first thing the searchers found was the boy's shoes standing in the road, then all his clothes lying almost untorn in the meadow. Of the boy himself nothing was ever found.

Beast or human criminal that time?

Enclosed meadows were particularly dangerous because the drystone walls - similar to those of the Lake District - with their mossy covering camouflaged her perfectly before she pounced. Jumping down from the top of walls and rocky outcrops was one of her favored methods of attack, especially dangerous to those tending flocks who had built their fires up against them for a little more shelter from the Margeride mountain winds. At least they died warm.

It was said La Bête would plough straight through a flock of sheep, scattering them like leaves to get at the shepherdess. However, she was much more wary of cows, which were sometimes found spattered with the blood she had spat at them. Her lack of fear of fire, dogs and people, especially women and children, but fear of cattle are strange but consistent features.

That so much detailed information still exists is thanks to 'le procès-verbal' or P.V., an old and sensible French legal procedure often mentioned in Maigret style detective films, where evidence is formally noted by officials in front of witnesses. There are volumes of them, often confirmed in church records of burial ceremonies, giving in detail La Bête as the cause of death and signed by witnesses such as priests, mayors and other respected persons.

One struggle against her is particularly clearly recorded by the Curate of Besseyre. Another curate - Ollier of Lorcières got even closer to the action by bandaging a girl's wounds and making a measured sketch of a footprint which was similar to but larger than those previously recorded. It is suspicious that so many churchmen occupied themselves with La Bête both before and after her reign. Was this perhaps because they were the only intellectual, literate and socially responsible people present in every sizable village? This point merits careful thought by the conspiracy theorists. Her consumption of clerics was limited to one convent novice near Grèzes in 1766; no priests, although she ate the cheek of a relative of Abbé Pourcher, her most famous chronicler, whose house, by the way, with its strange Bête-like carving on the door lintel, still stands. She liked her victims in skirts but obviously knew la Différence.

The preference of La Bête for women and children might have been simply because they were more readily available and less protected than the men. They tended the lonely mountainside flocks in ones or twos, whereas the men did the heavier work in the farm fields, often in groups and armed with spades, scythes etc. All parties were experienced wolf-repellers and had only contempt for these cowardly nuisances; a few stones usually sent them packing, unless they were rabid and, if they were, their messy bites were nothing like the surgical work of La Bête.

In March to June 1766 there were 14 attacks by her within 6 miles of Paulhac. Not bad for a reportedly dead Bête. Incidentally, the old village concluded its history tragically, being burned by the German army in 1944. It is perhaps now haunted by even sadder spirits than the victims of La Bête. She was just a hungry animal seeking food in the only way she could, not a political killing machine.

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