“It was, in fact, the land of the ever-memorable Beast, the Napoleon Bonaparte of wolves. What a fate it had! It lived ten months in Gévaudan and Vivarais, devouring women, children, and ‘shepherdesses famed for their beauty’ […] if all wolves had been like this one, they would have changed the course of human history.” These are the words with which Robert Louis Stevenson, in his work Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, refers to a mysterious animal to which 210 attacks on humans—113 of them fatal—were attributed in a central region of France between 1764 and 1767: the Beast of Gévaudan.
The author of Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde traveled in 1878 through that French county located in what is now the department of Lozère, between Auvergne and Languedoc. A place that once belonged to the Aragonese king Alfonso II and that in the 12th century became the first Occitan-speaking area to recognize the authority of the French monarchy, later becoming a settlement for Huguenots and seeing its once-thriving economy ruined by the religious wars that ravaged the region between the 16th and 17th centuries.
It is a geographically distinct place, characterized by its deep valleys, dense forests, and subsoil full of peat bogs—all of which made it dark, lush, and difficult for building roads, consequently resulting in scattered settlements. It was, therefore, a place where people could easily become isolated and suffer attacks without the possibility of receiving help. Furthermore, the winters were very long, lasting up to nine months, with the first snowfalls recorded in September and sometimes cold weather lasting until May.
At that time, wild fauna had not yet been brought to the brink of extinction by the intensive hunting that would occur in the following centuries. The wolf was an abundant predator, with its population in France estimated at around twenty thousand specimens, which meant that livestock frequently suffered attacks, keeping alive the legend of their ferocity since antiquity. That is why from the outset the Beast of Gévaudan was identified as a wolf, although numerous testimonies and pieces of evidence would give rise to other hypotheses.
A young fourteen-year-old shepherdess named Jeanne Boulet had the sad fate of being the first known fatal victim; it happened in Saint-Étienne-de-Lugdarès, in June 1764, and she was buried without sacraments because she was unable to confess before dying. The parish record states that the culprit was “the ferocious beast”, which would indicate there had been precedents. In fact, it is known that at least one other shepherd girl had been attacked near Langogne but survived because the beast gave up, likely due to the intimidation exerted by the oxen in the herd.
Indeed, attacks had also been reported the previous year in the neighboring region of the Dauphiné; one report describes an animal “the size of a huge wolf, light burnt-coffee color, with a slightly black stripe along the back, dirty white belly, very large and [squat?] head, a kind of fur forming a tuft on the head and next to the ears, tail covered with fur like that of a common wolf, but longer and curled at the tip.” For example, a teenage shepherd recounted how a monster passed among the sheep he was tending and lunged at him, only for him to escape thanks to the intervention of his companion.
Back in Lozère, new fatal cases between August and September 1764 led the locals to organize hunts which, being unsuccessful, prompted the intervention of some dragoons stationed nearby due to the lingering conflict with the Camisards of the Cévennes (groups of Huguenots who had taken up arms against the so-called Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which outlawed Protestantism). As the Camisard problem had nearly ended by 1715, what remained of the almost inactive Dragonnade (name of the repressive policy ordered by Louis XIV due to the dragoons used for it) was repurposed for this new hunting mission.
In command of fifty-six soldiers—thirty-nine infantrymen and seventeen cavalrymen—handpicked ad hoc for their marksmanship, was Jean-Baptiste-Louis François Boulanger, better known as Captain Duhamel, a noble officer of thirty-two, born in Amiens, who expanded his force by incorporating volunteer peasants. However, heavy snowfall prevented the first raids from achieving any results, and in the meantime, five more people were killed. The States of Languedoc announced a reward of two thousand livres for whoever could put an end to what seemed like a diabolical curse.
This is why the bishop of Mende, who at the time was also the Count of Gévaudan, invoked divine help, urging priests and the faithful to recite a prayer. All in vain, because the Beast continued to claim lives, almost always women and minors, forcing people to go out in groups to tend the livestock. Thanks to this, five boys and two girls between the ages of eight and twelve survived by defending themselves back to back; one of them, Jacques André Portefaix, distinguished himself so much that the king rewarded him by paying for his education and supporting his later admission into the Royal Corps of Artillery.
The failure of Duhamel’s troop was compounded by the discontent it generated among the locals, who complained that they were not paying for their lodging (it was customary for them to stay in people’s homes) or their upkeep. That’s why, in February 1765, the authorities sent an expert wolf hunter, Jean-Charles-Marc-Antoine Vaumesle d’Enneval, who was said to have killed three thousand wolves and who arrived accompanied by his son. Since they wanted the mission exclusively, Captain Duhamel had to leave with his men. However, the newcomers didn’t start the hunt until two months later, and by then the Beast was up to its old tricks.
It attacked Jeanne Marlet (or Jeanne Jouve, using her husband’s last name), a mother who was with her three children and who, displaying as much courage as desperation, managed to scare it away. Her bravery was rewarded by the king with three hundred livres, though this surely didn’t ease the pain of losing one of her children to injuries. By then, there were so many victims that the news spread beyond the borders and throughout Europe, prompting some mockery over the inability to eliminate the animal. It began to take on a paranormal aspect, as during a new attack it appeared to be fatally shot… only to escape and kill again the next day.
The disappointment caused by the Ennevals led Louis XV to send his personal arquebusier, François Antoine, Grand Louvetier de France (Great Wolfcatcher of France, responsible for the many wolf hunts), who also arrived with his son, a valet, fourteen gamekeepers, four hounds, and a greyhound. At first, they collaborated with the Ennevals, but then the latter left. The first major hunt took place on August 11, the same day that twenty-something Marie-Jeanne Valet managed to spear the Beast and drive it away to protect her friends, earning her the nickname the Maid of Gévaudan.
By mid-November, François Antoine managed to kill a large wolf in Chauzes that some identified as the one that had attacked them, although the hunter doubted it, finding nothing special about it. The animal was taxidermied, drawn, and exhibited at Queen Maria Leszczyńska’s palace, which seemed to mark the end of the nightmare, as there were no more reports for a couple of months. But it was a mirage; the same thing had happened at the end of August, when a gamekeeper of the Duke of Orléans shot another wolf—or, according to descriptions, half-wolf, half-dog—and the death of a girl shortly after brought things back to reality.
Now everyone truly believed it was over. François Antoine was granted a coat of arms depicting him carrying a wolf, and after killing several more animals, including litters, he left Gévaudan. However, at the beginning of 1766 the Beast reappeared with all its ferocity, and this time the locals were on their own, as the king was fed up with the matter and believed his arquebusier had resolved it; in his opinion, the new cases were just normal wolf attacks, like there had always been. Even the press dropped the subject as hunts resumed and poisoned dog carcasses were proposed as bait in the area where the Beast roamed.
This area included the Mouchet, Grand, and Chauvet mountains, about fifteen kilometers apart, which made it impossible to cover all the terrain efficiently; every hunt was followed by an attack and vice versa, although the beast was now described as more cautious. Sometimes there were periods of relative calm, as if the animal were satiating its hunger with non-human prey. That’s what happened in early 1767, which some attributed to the Masses and prayers held in chapels in the mountains, to which people made pilgrimages seeking God’s help. If there was a divine response, it was tragic: the discovery of the beheaded corpse of young Jeanne Bastide. Then, the Marquis of Apcher decided to personally lead a new expedition in mid-June.
Among the twelve members was Jean Chastel, a farmer and tavern owner who was still recognized as an excellent hunter despite being around sixty years old. Tradition says that Chastel positioned himself in a clearing and began reading the Bible calmly to draw the Beast’s attention; when it appeared, he shot it with two silver bullets that he had made by melting a medallion of the Virgin, and the marquis’s pack finished it off. According to Chastel’s testimony, it helped that the beast stared at him instead of immediately leaping at him, as was its habit. This gave rise to rumors, such as that the animal belonged to him; we’ll examine those later.
The French National Archives preserve the report made at the castle of Apcher by royal notary Roch Étienne Marin, after the animal was autopsied. In it, it states that it seemed like a wolf **“but extraordinary and very different, in its appearance and proportions, from the wolves we see in this country.” Indeed, it weighed more than fifty kilos and measured one meter seventy from the base of the tail to the top of the head. That body was also taxidermied before being sent to Versailles, but it arrived in such poor condition that the stench led to the king’s rejection. Apparently, it was analyzed by none other than the Count of Buffon, the eminent naturalist who certified that it was a large wolf. But if he wrote anything about it, it has been lost.
The same happened with the beast’s remains, which were buried in the garden of the mansion of Duke Louis Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld, a descendant of the famous philosopher-poet; that building was eventually demolished in 1825. For his part, Chastel—whose shotgun is still preserved—received a reward of seventy-two livres, which was barely increased by the prizes granted by local authorities, so he had to officially claim the offered reward and eventually received fifteen hundred; an amount equivalent to one hundred and fifty common wolf kills or five years of a farmer’s income. After all, following his fortunate shots, no further deaths were recorded.
The story of the Beast of Gévaudan presents questions and hypotheses that are impossible to prove. One of them is determining what kind of animal it was. It’s possible that it was a wolf, indeed, since we’ve already said that France was teeming with them at the time and their attacks on livestock were part of everyday rural life. That its victims were human is more unusual, though not impossible, as similar cases had occurred in other regions, albeit not as severe. The zoometric measurements noted in the notary’s report have led some naturalists to suppose that it was an Alpine wolf; displaced from its natural habitat, it would no longer find the usual large prey (deer) and would instead find an easy alternative in women and children.
There is also the possibility that it wasn’t a single individual but a pack—possibly rabid, as was suggested at the time, since it often did not attack out of hunger but pure aggressiveness—and perhaps not pure wolves but hybrids or even feral dogs. The distances between the attack locations would indicate as much, although a wolf can cover up to a hundred kilometers in a day. Its appearance was canine, according to all witnesses, though it’s true that the faunal knowledge of European peasants at the time was very limited and always pointed to the proverbial wickedness of wolves, which opens the door to another explanation.
This one points to an exotic animal, perhaps escaped from one of the private zoos of the nobility. In that sense, the descriptions collected about its abnormal size—it was compared to a horse or a cow—the stripes on its back, and the tuft of hair on it would mostly align with a tiger, a lion (as in the film Brotherhood of the Wolf), a Tasmanian wolf or tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus, a now-extinct marsupial), or, the experts’ preferred theory, a hyena (there were several in the menagerie of the King of Sardinia in Turin). However, this would conflict with the dental report carried out by Roch Étienne Marin, which clearly corresponded to a canid.
One alternative that was rumored was that of a trained beast used to steal (the Rodier couple ended up at the gallows for something like that, and their children in the galleys), to murder (some local notables were said to have used wolves trained to kill peasants in revenge for royal trials opened by Louis XIV against them for abuse, the so-called Grands jours d’Auvergne), or to cover something up (Chastel or his son, who were rumored—dubiously—to be sadists used to cannibalism during the Seven Years’ War, might have raised and trained wolves to kill on the orders of a local lord, and when the wolves escaped, they began to kill freely, thus creating a smokescreen, before finally presenting themselves as the ones who put an end to the Beast).
The idea of an animal and its master is based, apart from fantasy (usually portrayed in cheap novels or in the aforementioned film), on the unusual lack of fear the Beast showed toward humans (sometimes it would back off and sit on its haunches before resuming its attack), its aggressive behavior (which went beyond the mere need to feed itself), and its invulnerability to bullets (attributed to its being protected by some kind of boar hide armor, like those used by hunting dogs, although today this is more often attributed to the poor accuracy of weapons at the time).
The possibility of a human killer is also not ruled out, a psychopath who took advantage of the traditional human suspicion of wolves or even a real attack to pass off his crimes as the work of a beast. Certain mutilations on the bodies, which would not match an animal’s activity—such as decapitation—or the fact that many children and young girls were found without clothing, in some cases with signs of sexual violence, would point to this. These crimes would have been covered up by the fact that wolves found the victims already dead and devoured them, as they normally would with any carrion. The absence of adult male victims is another element supporting the hypothesis.
Could this have been the case with the Chastels? The aforementioned Jean was nicknamed Son of the Masca (Witch) and it was said that one of his nine sons had been kidnapped and castrated by Barbary pirates, returning to France with a beast he had trained to kill and placing it at the service of a local nobleman. Becoming wolf-chiefs, both would have dedicated themselves to killing out of sadism or revenge until, during one of the hunts, they led the gamekeepers into a swamp to laugh as they sank. According to one version, the father shot the beast; according to another, the culprits were arrested over the incident and during the time they were in jail, no attacks occurred.
There’s a curious epilogue along those lines. In 1777, a decade after the events, a maid named Marianne Thomas Berniquette, who worked for a doctor, was savagely raped and murdered in her own home in the village of Cros by a farmer named Jean Chausse, alias Lanterolle, who had dressed in a wool skin and gloves to pretend to be a wolf. Or a werewolf, one might specify. In any case, the legend has been overcome by the passage of time and is now in service of tourism: wolves are part of local heraldry, there are numerous statues and a museum that recall the case, and one can even visit the Parc à loups du Gévaudan, a wolf recovery park that is home to about eighty specimens.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on June 26, 2025: El enigma no resuelto de la Bestia de Gévaudan, el misterioso animal que asoló una región de Francia en el siglo XVIII
SOURCES
François Fabre, La Bête du Gévaudan. Une exploration historique du mystère de la légende de la Bête du Gévaudan
Giovanni Tovaro, The Man-Eater of Gévaudan. When te serial-killer is an animal
Lorraine Boissoneault, When the Beast of Gévaudan Terrorized France
Wikipedia, Bestia de Gévaudan
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