What was the beast of Gevaudan?

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She last definitely killed on 18th June 1767 at Dèsges. Fittingly her final victim is the unknown warrior - an unidentified little girl. Sadly we can never know her name or if she was meant to bear four pretty children. All right, a paradox but so is everything about La Bête. Although there were outbreaks of killings by very similar beasts in the 17th and 19th centuries, after this last one La Bête, as La Bête, vanishes from the world scene, although some husbands might reasonably claim to have married her.

A meticulous and outstandingly elegant French hunting weapons book by Dominique Venner, a man, by the way, published 1984 refers briefly but carefully to her on Pages 113/114.

English comments made at the time consist mainly of newspaper articles, indignantly recorded by Abbé Pourcher in his famous book, which scathingly report that a French army of 12,000 had been routed by a beast. Some beast! It is surprising so little has been written on La Bête outside France when you consider her splendid achievements as a serial killer. Jack the Ripper officially killed only 5 victims, all women, over a period of 10 autumn weeks (not as foggy as films depict), whereas La Bête often had a mixed bag of 4 or 5 within a single week, for example during a snowy 1st to 7th January 1765 and another 95 over 3 years, once killing 2 and maiming 1 on a mid-summer's solstice. As usual, the French do it better and she elegantly beat Jack’s score by nearly a century not-out, no doubt would have killed JR too, given une demi-chance.

One of the few considered English comments appears in 'Walking through France' by Neillands on Pages 142/155. The dates he mentions are confusing and apparently incorrect, suggesting Bête activity as far back as 1745, which is earlier than elsewhere recorded. He describes St-Juéry, where he stayed, as being ravaged by both La Bête in 1764 and, in 1944, by the Waffen-SS from the Das Reich Division. Even in 1988 Neillands admits he was glad to be sleeping within the friendly claw-proof walls of the Hotel du Bès and not outside under thin canvas. Incidentally, a Monsieur Bès of Bessière wrote a manuscript on a sighting and chase of 23rd December 1764 by a young subaltern called Dulaurier. He had just drawn his saber to strike La Bête when she jumped over a wall and ran across a marsh where his horse could not follow.

A 1992 expensive Canadian book 'Wolf hunting in France in the reign of Louis XV' by R. H. Thompson deals extensively with La Bête, contending that there can be satisfactory explanations based on large wolves for all her depredations.

On the other hand, Denneval, a Norman squire known for his surly directness, recognized as the greatest wolf expert in 18th century France and having the advantage (?) of actually being in charge on the spot, firmly and officially asserted that there was indeed something very strange going on in Gévaudan and that "La Bête is no wolf". Perhaps that was just because he couldn’t catch her.

Another recent article writer, C.H.D. Clarke, is an expert in North American wolves. Firstly, he reprimands those who refer to La Bête as a legend, strongly pointing out that she was definitely no legend but was hard fact and really existed. His second important observation is: ‘The certainty that no rabies was involved meant that there was something going on that was without precedent.’ Rabid wolf attacks are clumsy compared with La Bête's elegant handbaggings. He considers that one explanation of La Bête is there was more than one and they resulted from a natural cross breeding between large dog, possibly of an Italian hunting breed, and wild wolf. Clarke quotes 21 references in his study. His explanation for the Bête phenomenon is supported by reports published elsewhere of vigorous hybrids between wolf and large dog, for example the wolf of Argenton, killed in 1884. Another candidate for cross-breeding with wolf might be the Lycaon - a carniverous wild hunting dog still active, and feared, in Africa. It is perhaps a little small but is very savage and cunning. A cross with a wolf would be a formidable animal and a litter of them loose in a district could well be taken as an abnormal phenomenon. The presence of African animals - hyenas etc. - in the Gévaudan is recorded in cave drawings over thousands of years and even today there are attempts to re-establish them in large game parks.

There are connections between the works of Grimm, Rousseau, Stevenson and La Bête. Grimm, apparently, was a friend of Rousseau by whom a poem was written on the famous fight between Portefaix, protecting his six child companions, against La Bête on 12th January 1765 at Vileret d'Apcher. Robert Louis Stevenson possibly based his "beautiful shepherdess" stories on a girl from Paulhac who was killed by her.

What coincidental patterns she weaves. For example, Stevenson carefully includes her in his famous 'Travels with a donkey in the Cévennes', written 1879, particularly admiring her bravery in attacking in daylight a party of couriers armed with pistols and swords. His summation is incomparable: 'if all wolves had been as this wolf they would have changed the history of man.’ Then by 1886 he writes 'Jekyll and Hyde'. We will never know if his werewolf -like theme - changing, hairy hands etc. - was based on La Bête but it is reasonable to conclude that she played a part. The book opened as a play in London in 1888 just as Jack the Ripper simultaneously started his, compared with La Bête, meager series of 5 murders. In the war German troops destroyed two villages where La Bête prowled and a chance German bomb on Bournemouth hit the house in which Stevenson had died .

The old oak table on which this article has been written was made by Filmer & Sons, Berner Street for the home of Dr. Langdon Down, who described Down's Syndrome in 1866. His Kingston upon Thames mansion - Normansfield, - became and still is a hospital. Some say the Ripper was a medical man. An alley off Berner Street is where Elizabeth Stride died of a severed windpipe and Berner Street itself was a centre of Ripper activity. Incidentally, 'berner' is an old French verb for to mock or make fun of. Some do say the Ripper - usually described as about 5 feet 7 inches tall - was a woman; there was talk of Jill the Ripper at the time and who had more motive for killing those sad, loose ladies than someone whose husband or son had been ruined by them? Confusing, but can we admit the concept of infinite situations created to allow all possible connections? A long way from our simple Bête, or is it? Only a god could create such a complicated and extensive system so perhaps Gabriel Florent, wordy bishop of Mende, was not wrong after all when he, like Abbé Pourcher, referred to her in his famous mandate as 'The Scourge of God' and attributed supernatural, indeed heavenly, powers to her.

Another author apparently influenced by La Bête was Jakob Ludwig Grimm of Brothers Grimm fame who published Red Riding Hood as 'Rotkäppchen' in approx. 1812, a work recognized as having deep significance. He had been librarian to Jerome Bonaparte, being expert in antiquities and mythology - not that La Bête was a myth, her 'All the better to eat you with' was backed-up by real teeth. Incidentally, the first clearly recorded Red Riding Hood fairy story is attributed to a Frenchman, Charles Perrault, a great classical historian. It appeared in his book ‘Stories of Times Past’ in 1697.

The famous Nostradamus, in spite of his Latinised pen-name, was a Frenchman named Michel de Nostradame, born 1503 in Provence, who spent most of his life studying, working in and travelling between places later associated with La Bête, such as Avignon ( La Bête was widely reported in the Avignon Gazette) and Montpellier, the city from which the military hunt for La Bête was directed by the Count of Moncan, a cautious but capable organizer, who can take the credit for ordering Captain Duhamel into the fray but handled very delicately an official request that the local population be armed against La Bête with firearms from his arsenals.

One of Nostradamus’ prophecies for mid-18th century France states:

'Mars threatens us with the belligerent force.
Blood will be made to spread out 70 times.
The church will grow, suffer harm and more to those who would listen to nothing of them.'

Not too far out, was he, especially as there is nothing else obviously relevant to this particular prophecy?

Allow him another one:

'The lost thing, hidden for so many centuries is discovered.
Pasteur will be honored almost as a demi-god.
Dishonour shall come by other winds when the moon finishes her great cycle '.

In the Place des Cordeliers, Marvejols there is, by the sculptor Auricoste, a contemporary style statue bringing out her cunning brutality. However, La Bête was never seen in Marvejols, so why they have a statue is another mystery. Perhaps they are jealous of the towns and villages she really did haunt. "Mon Dieu, they have Une Bête and we do not!" Shades of Clochemerle. The inscription claims the statue to be her but in fact it is of only the deformed animal killed by Jean Chastel, so perhaps it is just a cunning spoiling act. They even held a Bête exhibition in the Mairie - the Town Hall - at Marvejols in 1958.

The church at St Alban-sur-Limagnole has La Bête as its weathercock - in memoriam as in life she remains inaccessible and knows just which way the wind is blowing.

Most parts of the world take particular stories or legends to heart - hero or beast, distilling them out from all the rest to reflect exactly the character of the country. In England we have King Arthur and Robin Hood. In America they have Mickey Mouse and Davey Crockett. In France La Bête is still alive because she represents the tough Auvergne landscape and its independent people who often have had to fight occupying troops and oppressive bureaucracy.

Maybe its not too late for her to take an evening stroll round the streets of expense account restaurants in Brussels. Bon appétit, Bête.

The question Bête students fear. It always feels undignified and rude simply to answer, "I don't know." Some modern experts in wolves who never hunted her think she must have been a wolf but hunters on the spot at the time held very different opinions, as did the cripples suffering in squalor and poverty from her blurringly fast unbelievably wide-ranging attacks.

No article on La Bête is complete unless it clearly states the opinion of Abbé Pierre Pourcher, the meticulous author of by far the greatest and longest (1040 small pages) book on the subject, which was personally approved by Pope Léon XIII. Pourcher’s interpretation of the mystery is entirely religiously based, sober and critical. His concept is La Bête was just the deformed wolf-like animal killed by Jean Chastel in 1767 but that it had been aided by God as a Scourge to correct human wickedness, being brought on specifically by bad behaviour and unacceptable changes in church ritual. This heavenly aid, not being a monster, explained to Pourcher her power and invulnerability. He repeats, several times, that she was something very abnormal: "Her cunning, skill and mobility, even her very existence, were completely beyond human understanding." The highly respected - Gabriel Florent - Bishop of Mende at the time of La Bête agreed with Pourcher.

There are many different views on what she was - about twenty books have been written - and almost all the other authors do not agree with Pourcher. They are fairly equally divided between conventional explanations - large wolves, cross-breeds, tricks with hyenas etc. and the abnormal - alien, mutant, prehistoric etc. There are also differing opinions among authors on La Bête as to the character of the Chastels - father and son. Pourcher records Jean Chastel as being a man of very good character whereas, for example, Chevalley, in his semi-fictional novel, regards the family with suspicion, even to the extent of surmising there might have been some deception or cross-breeding involving a hyena. It is alleged his son, Antoine, had been a prisoner, castrated and tortured in the Middle East. Incidentally, the hyena species, which hunts as much as it scavenges, is genetically more similar to cat than dog, being of the feline family Feloidea, which certainly opens up the possibility of a terribly formidable cross-breed, such as hyena and big cat. In any event, the Chastel name is closely associated with the La Bête mystery but whether justifiably and, if so, for good or evil has never become clear.

To answer a difficult question like the identity of La Bête try shooting sighting-shots at the two extremes and hope the third shot lands, navy style, correctly in the middle.

At one extreme let us say she never existed, being only rumor arising from attacks by a few large wolves, which may have been cross-bred or deformed, and a rise in cases of rabies. The Jesuits may have invented or exaggerated her to shepherd members of their flock back into loyalty to the church, which was under political pressure from 1761 onwards. Some Huguenots, terribly persecuted and almost wiped out by the Jesuits in the past, welcomed her as an excuse to be armed. Hotheads of all types used her - ultimately successfully - to foment revolution. Even Louis XV might have taken advantage of the opportunity to send his troops to an increasingly unruly district. All these possibilities have been repeatedly analysed in literature on La Bête. On the other hand, we have graves and 100 corpses - a lot compared with the modest scores of most serial killers. We have hundreds, maybe thousands, of individual and collective eye witnessings, sometimes by whole dioceses en masse - intelligent French people of all ranks reporting to every type of state and religious body. We have a vast quantity of manuscripts, diagrams and other records authenticated by the highest possible religious, military and state bodies and by respected individuals, such as ministers, dukes and generals. Conspirators probably could not have murdered 100 people over four years and fabricated all the evidence without being suspected at least once. The more likely situation is that some parties took what advantage they could of the existence of a real beast rather than inventing one when there was no need to.

At the other extreme, we could accept that she was something unique in recorded human experience:- an alien, mutant or surviving prehistoric monster. Only such explanations fully satisfy the records of her speed, elusiveness and cunning.

You can, of course, choose to dismiss La Bête as merely a large wolf but you will find those two very uncomfortable words ‘and yet’ keep coming to mind.

It is for the reader to decide from the unbiased information honestly presented here, and any obtainable from other sources, where between the two extremes the truth lies.

Whatever it, or she, was, something strong, fast and clever painted the green French countryside red for three years two centuries ago without being caught. A warning perhaps against genetically creating intelligent beings who regard humans as free lunches, not lords of creation.

To the explanation for this particular naughty lady of shady lanes the only limitation is your imagination.

After 200 years just a faint echo remains of the terrible shadow La Bête cast in the 18th century so should she still be feared? Walk thoughtfully alone in a darkening wood or on misty Bodmin moor and find the answer.

When twigs crack, don't whistle.

The main book on the subject: ‘Histoire de La Bête du Gévaudan’ by Abbé Pierre Pourcher 1889; 1040 small pages, translated for the first time into English as ‘The Beast of Gevaudan’ (ISBN No. O 9532879 0 4) by the author of this article.

The following are all in French:

Histoire des Armes - Dominique Venner 1984. Weapons. Brief 2 page comment only.
Histoire Fidèle de La Bête. Henri Pourrat. 1946. Atmospheric local author.
La Bête du Gévaudan in Auvergne. Fabre, Abbé François. Saint Flour. 1901 and Paris 1930. Historical.
Hunting. Magné de Marolles 1781. Wolf-hunting expert
La Bête du Gévaudan. Abel Chevalley. Paris 1936. Semi-fictional.
La Bête du Gévaudan. Felix Buffière. 1994. General.
La Bête du Gévaudan. Gérard Menatory. 1984. Analytical.
La Bête du Gévaudan. M. Moreau-Bellecroix. Paris. 1945.
La Bête qui mangeait le monde. Abbé Xavier Pic. Mende 1968 and Paris 1971. Historical.
La Bête du Gévaudan unmasked by computers. Jean-Jacques Barloy. 1980.


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Related Links
The Beast of Gevaudan official web site (in French mostly)

anonymous letter warns us...