The Beast of Gêvandan: A Mini-Essay

     On June 30, 1764, Jeanne Boulet was mauled by an unknown animal while herding sheep in the mountainous area of south-central France. The fourteen-year-old girl was severely mangled, but her sheep remained unharmed. Boulet's death began a long succession of brutal attacks which horrified the nation. In the region of Le Gêvandan, a massive wolf with reddish-brown fir and a black stripe down its back savagely terrorized the countryside and left a wake of blood and fear. Some claimed the animal could pounce thirty feet and walk upright on its hind legs. In homes and public halls throughout France, people whispered that a loup-garou (werewolf) was running amok. As panic spread, rewards were issued for the beast – prompting many false claims and a mass attempt at exterminating all wolves within the area – and King Louis XV sent a cavalry troop to destroy la bête du Gêvandan (the beast of Gêvandan). All attempts, however, proved futile, the death toll continued to rise, and the event rapidly became known throughout Europe, with even the English periodical St. James's Chronicle featuring a report. Finally, on June 19, 1767, Jean Chastel, armed with a silver bullet, took down the beast. The monster's death sparked jubilation and made Chastel an instant hero. For two weeks he paraded the corpse across France, where its final stop was the Palace of Versailles. Disgusted by the animal's putrid state, King Louis XV ordered it immediately buried in an undisclosed location. The act made any concrete identification impossible and prompted the creation of a centuries-old mystery. What was la bête du Gêvandan? 

     Over the years, theories have arisen, including a wolf infected with rabies and a prehistoric mammal that survived extinction. In the 1980s, popular notions strayed into more bizarre realms. Jean-Jacques Barloy postulated that the incident was maliciously fabricated by Protestant hunters who, as part of a fervent Protestant-Jesuit rivalry occurring at the time, unleashed a pack of huge dogs on the Catholic peasantry. In 1992, Michel Louis built upon the 1988 proposal of R.F. Dubois and claimed the monster may have been purposefully bred by Chastel – who owned a large red-coated mastiff – and turned loose on the villages. Three years later, Pierre Cubizolles took the Chastel conspiracy to a new level, asserting the beast was Chastel or one of his sons dressed in a wolf-skin costume murdering hapless victims. In 1997, Franz Jullien, a taxidermist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, discovered a stuffed specimen of striped hyena similar to the animal shot by Chastel. Despite the discovery, though, individuals such as Rolf Peterson question whether this species could exist so far outside of its African habitat. A werewolf, a rabid animal, or a man-made fabrication – la bête du Gêvandan proves just as much an enigma today as it did in the middle of the eighteen century.

 Works Referenced

Barloy, Jean-Jacques. “La Bête du Gêvandan sournise á l’ordinateur.” Science et Vie 131 (1980): 54-59.

Cubizolles, Pierre. Loups Garous en Gévaudan: Le Martyre des Innocents. Paris: Brioude, 1995.

Dubois, R.F. Vie et Mort de la Bête du Gêvandan. Paris: Ogam, 1988.

Louis, Michel. La Bête du Gêvandan: L’innocence des loups. Paris: Perrin, 1992. 

Smith, Jay. Monsters of the Gêvandan: The Making of a Beast. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.