BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: A SERIAL KILLER IN 18TH CENTURY FRANCE

On a bright June day in 1764, a youngshepherdess from the Gevaudan area of Southern France returned to her farm in aterrible state. 

Lunch: meat and no veg

Her dress and undergarments were in ragsand she was so frightened that she could scarcely speak. When asked to explainwhat had happened, she said that a ferocious creature - a beast - had savagelyattacked her. She’d only avoided death because her herd of oxen had driven offthe wild animal.

Local villagers dismissed her story asnonsense. They claimed that a wolf - maybe rabid - had attempted theattack. 

Was this the beast?

The shepherdess stuck to her story and itsoon transpired that she had not been lying. Just a few weeks later, on 30June, a 14-year-old girl was eaten alive by a strange and ferocious animal. Twoweeks later, another girl was dragged down and killed: soon after, three15-year-old boys from Chayla l’Eveque were also killed. This spate of attackswere followed by many others, all of them fatal.

On 6 October, a young man from Pougetreturned home with appalling wounds. His scalp was slashed open and he hadsuffered terrible chest injuries. He claimed he’d been attacked while walkingthrough an orchard. He could only identify his attacker as ‘a beast’.

The beast: tore our victims' entrails

By January, 1765, the attacks had taken amore sinister turn. One day, a young man named Jacques Portefaux and seven ofhis friends were attacked by the same wild animal. The story of their heroicdefence - they eventually drove it away - soon reached the ears of King LouisXV.

Antoine kills a beast. But is it THE beast?

He immediately despatched two professionalhunters to kill the beast. They spent months killing wolves, but never caughtsight of the beast itself: they were eventually replaced by François Antoine,the king’s Lieutenant of the Hunt.

On 21 September, 1765, Antoine met withsuccess. He killed a large grey wolf measuring almost two metres in length and80 centimetres in height. It weighed 60 kilograms and bore scars on its bodythat attack survivors claimed to have inflicted.

Antoine's beast

Antoine informed the king: ‘We declare bythe present report… that we never saw [such] a big wolf that could be comparedto this one. This is why we estimate it could be the fearsome beast that causedso much damage.’

That ought to have been the end of thestory but at the beginning of December, 1765, the beast emerged once again andseverely attacked two children. In the weeks that followed, dozens more adultswere killed in the fields.

Eventually, local people took matters intotheir own hands. In June, 1767, after a large pilgrimage atNotre-Dame-des-Tours, one of the lords of Gevaudan organized a hunt: among thehunters were Jean Chastel, a 60-year-old man with a solid track-record as botha marksman and a deeply religious man.

He had stationed himself at a place calledSogne d’Auvert, near the village of Saugues, and was reciting his rosary whenhe suddenly noticed a giant beast standing close to him.

With commendable calmness, he shoulderedhis shotgun  - previously loadedwith consecrated bullets - took aim and fired.

The beast was paralysed for a moment, inshock from the force of the shot. Seconds later, it was knocked off its feet byChastel’s dogs.  It fell down dead.

Did Chastel kill the beast?

The animal was examined by all the localdignitaries who were amazed by its strange features and huge size. Theydeclared that it was not a wolf : rather, it was a monster of unknown origin.

Chastel tried to take the beast toVersailles, but the corpse putrefied in the stinking heat of summer and had tobe buried. It was never officially identified.

Mystery surrounds the nature to the beastto this day. Some claim it was a giant wolf; others, more fancifully, cite itsattacks as evidence of werewolves.

There are also claims that it was a strayhyena or even the surviving example of a mesonychid - a prehistoric carnivorousdog.

One thing is sure: Chastel’s bullet put anend to the beast’s attacks. After years of fear and mayhem, the people ofGevaudan in Southern France were finally free from nature’s most terrifyingserial killer.

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