What Was the Beast of Gevaudan? cont. (page2)

by Derek Brockis

Scarlet billows start to spread.

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.

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 Gunbearer, 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.

First catch your Bête

Many ‘Wanted’ posters appeared. For example this one in August 1764 (only slightly parodied) made a lot of profit for the printers:- "Reward 12,000 livres if dead. Known as 'La Bête' but kills under three aliases. Reddish brown with dark ridged stripe down the back. Resembles wolf/hyena but big as a donkey. Long gaping jaw, 6 claws, pointy upright ears and supple furry tail - mobile like a cat's and can knock you over. Cry: more like horse neighing than wolf howling. Last seen by people mostly now dead. If she approaches you please leave behind a signed copy of this poster." Many pictures were circulated, some very elegant ones from leading contemporary Paris art houses such as Basset, Corbié, Le Bel, Maillet and Mondhare, even some from Germany, for example in the Hennin collection. Prints of many are still available, especially from book shops in Mende, the centre of Bête history, even though she never killed there.

From August 1764 on the King's orders the world's greatest ever hunting aristocracy was ranged against La Bête with all its resources of châteaux, thoroughbred horses from royal stables for the leading huntsmen and, for others, hacks from humbler stables, wearing darned Agincourt jackets and often rode to their deaths. There were specialist wolf, boar and bear hounds plus as many echelons of trackers, hunters and master-hunters as NHS management grades but wasting less money, having no computers. She didn't stand a chance, or did she?

Note that no suspicious human footprints - sensibly shoed or otherwise - were ever found near a kill, although La Bête's own easily identifiable long, clawed prints were there many times. For example, they were all over the riverside mud at her famous fight with Marie Jeanne Valet (the servant girl who successfully fought her off with a spear made from a spindle). Marie - given the complimentary nick-name ‘La Pucelle’ (little flea), after Joan of Arc, provides the glamorous heroine element of the Bête story . There is a shortage of pretty heroines - the others, alas, usuailly ending up dead. She was a feisty 20 year old, not afraid to stand up to nobility in maintaining her opinion on the exact nature of the beast she fought. These footprints, recognized as La Bête on the spot by 3 leaders of different hunting parties, bloodstains and supporting evidence from a 16 year old girl witness were all recorded in the procès-verbal, helping to confirm the riverside incident as genuine. Contemporary pictures of the fight still exist, some simple, some stylized, as one would expect.

In another incident, a fresh body was found lying out in snow with no tracks or footprints round it at all. Impossible, of course but typical of the strange happenings high in the Margeride mountains, a harsh region which the locals describe as 'nine months of winter and three months of hell'.

Regarding stories surrounding La Bête, it is unlikely she founded the 'Plump Partners' dating agency but against the fiction or hoaxes (some admitted) there are 100 horrors, mostly with witnesses, graves, names, parishes and dates as evidence. Grim facts and bloodless human body parts prove her existence, even if the more lurid tales are suspect.

One indisputable fact is that La Bête did succeed, aided by bad weather and economic problems with the cloth industry, in dragging the region down to a state of poverty and famine. Women and children were too terrified to tend their sheep and cattle out on the lonely pastures and the men were constantly called away from field work to hunt La Bête. The resulting neglect was sufficient to tip the scales of such a fragile economy into a decline.

Louis XV and his court took her very seriously. She prowled a region where Huguenot/Jesuit tensions were acute and the King feared she, plus the arms massing there, would ignite the revolution whose tumbrels were perhaps just beginning to rumble in the distance. Remember, the Gévaudan was part of the ‘Independent States’, whose recognition of the French Crown’s sovereignty was not at the time fully ratified. Problems arising from the Antipopes in Avignon and the Great Schism of 1378 to 1417 still echoed and the city was not annexed to France until 1791. Although dissolute, Louis XV was not a king who killed more people than he had to - his nickname was 'Le Bien-Aimé', but whether this meant he was well liked or he got a lot of loving is subtly and Frenchly left unclear. Being King in those pre-Revolutionary years must have been one hell of a job without 'The Beast Who Is Eating Everybody' making life even more difficult - Larousse, the main French encyclopedia, even in its recent editions still states: 'the whole of France concerned itself about her for some time'.

The most dangerous animal in the world is the intelligent French female and poor Louis XV had at least three to contend with - Marquise de Pompadour, Madame la Comtesse du Barry, who dined at five, copying the King, a politically significant fact (according to Dumas - ‘The Queen’s Necklace’) and La Bête, who also dined in the daytime but less formally. One Madame lost her head but La Bête kept hers while crunching many others. Unlike the curvy courtesans she never embraced the fleshy King, who died from smallpox - a million little bites instead of one big one. His successor died of the biggest bite of all - la Guillotine, so perhaps Louis XV did not handle French affairs, including La Bête, too badly after all, even if he did, aided of course by Madame Pompadour, bankrupt the state. La Bête nearly bankrupted only the Gévaudan.

The importance of La Bête in French history is virtually unknown outside France. Like BSE, they couldn't get rid so each blamed everybody else. There is no lack of conspiracy theories, especially relating to the King's anti-Jesuit policies, which peaked in 1761, two to three years before she appeared. Certainly people exploited her for political purposes but equally certainly there was a real dreadful entity conveniently there to exploit. La Bête's total effect on history was, perhaps, beneficial. If she took only 100 potentially revolting peasant’s lives but stopped war between Huguenots and Jesuits, later saving from la Guillotine some aristos who were recognized as having helped starving peasants fight her, she leaves a moral credit balance. You never know, she might be canonized one day.

Often two or three versions are recorded of stories about her life and presumed deaths. There are, for example, two versions of the La Pucelle (the spindle packing heroine) story when she was called upon by Antoine to identify the body of the Loup de Chazes at the Château of Besset. One says she firmly refused to identify it as La Bête, the other that she did but only doubtfully, from a wound on its shoulder possibly made by her spear. The Loup de Chazes might or might not have been the beast that attacked Marie Jeanne but was not La Bête.

There is more than one version of the Loup de Chazes story itself. One states Antoine’s kill as genuine, another as fraudulent. Incidentally, the skin of this wolf is said to have been destroyed by the National Museum in Paris only early this century, it having lost all its hair. Why would they destroy one of the most famous relics in all France unless it was, as many suspected, a fake or, X File style, something people were not to know about, like the hieroglyphics on wooden tablets discovered in 1722 at the bases of the 593 giant statues on Easter Island? Controversy and mystery still follow La Bête today as persistently as she stalked her terrified victims 200 years ago.

Goaded by the wrath of a King lumbered with a naked wooden rocking horse in his Versailles garden, awaiting her never-to-arrive skin, the desperate nobles were reduced to the argument that La Bête could not exist because it was impossible she had escaped their mighty searches. She did not know this so carried on killing. Can you be completely impossible and yet exist? Certainement, if you are French.

Chastel's deformed wolf-like creature, shot at Sogne d’Auvers on about 20th June 1767, remains as one but only one of the possible answers to the puzzle. Diagrams of its deformities, for example of the jaws, still exist. If it was the solution it was almost certainly contrived and not the whole story, the remainder of which is alleged to involve human elements and various collusions. It is unlikely the popular young Marquis d'Apcher - the leader of the hunt - cheated. It was not his elegant style and cost him the best excuse ever to miss church on Sundays. Which would you rather do as a handsome 19 year old marquis - go to church or gallop round the Auvegne rescuing grateful mademoiselles from the very jaws of La Bête? Suspicion falls on others, including one of Apcher’s relations. This involved tale has already created a semi-fictional novel and more arguments than the Dome. It is for smoky camp fires on long nights. Keep an open mind. Incidentally, the gun which shot this creature was bought by Abbé Pierre Pourcher at St. Julien in 1888 and he writes about hearing of its whereabouts from a woman on a train. He met her by chance, having entered her carriage because he feared she might be molested by two unruly soldiers.

In the Gévaudan district wolves were often caught in deep pit-traps, dug and concealed so the wolves fell in. Bait was sometimes scattered round the traps. Because people thought La Bête could jump out of normal pits, very deep ones were dug, sometimes of complex structure, for example octagonal in shape and interconnected by tunnels; the purpose of these is not clear. The bait was often unburied carcasses, or parts, of her victims, left out in spite of protests from priests wanting early and decent burials. She never fell for it. Do not read the accounts of this subject, or those of poisoning - they are not nice.

One desperate measure adopted against La Bête was the extensive use of poison, sometimes applied across whole mountainsides. The King's Wolfcatcher, Monsieur Denneval, the surly Norman squire, who had 1274 (1200 previous ones and a share of 74 while hunting La Bête) wolves to his credit, was an early advocate of poisoning. This was after his hounds, the best in France and excellent trackers but more suited to the flat, open countryside of Normandie than the rugged, wooded Gévaudan, had failed to catch her. Another supporter of poisoning, at least for a time, was M. Lafont, the Syndic, a very important local official, possibly the cleverest of all those hunting La Bête. The chief poisoner was a M. Mercier. With his assistant he was particularly busy during April and May 1767, buying live dogs, then poisoning them with very big doses to provide ready-poisoned carcasses. The regional Governor, St. Priest, finally ordered operations to cease because so many innocent domestic and other animals were dying, including the dogs providing the poisoned carcasses that killed even more dogs. A serious matter for the mountain shepherds to whom loss of their partners could mean starvation. Specialist poisons supposed to kill only wolves were formulated but they didn't work, killing either all or nothing. Elaborate traps, decoys and ambushes proved equally ineffective.

It is hard to imagine our gourmet Bête, rarely an animal eater, preferring to nibble a hard, cold, dead dog rather than a soft, warm, live milkmaid. Who would? The attacks did, however, taper off and finally cease at the height of the poisoning program. Like so many things connected with La Bête, or Bêtes, it is impossible to say what was effect and what coincidence.

By this time things had got so bad that there is even record of dogs eating human bodies left by La Bête, although the possibility was quickly ruled out that the basic mystery could be explained either by the activities of packs of wild dogs or by wolves acquiring cravings for human flesh. The local French called the wolves that ate human flesh ‘Carnivorous’, although the ordinary sheep-eating ones could hardly be called ‘Vegetarian’.

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