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| The legend surrounding the attacks spawned a movie, '']'' released in 2001, which while based on the records of the creature also took the usual liberties to turn it into an entertaining story. Despite being an excellent movie that is credited with being the highest-grossing French film so far, it is not an accurate account of the occurances in Gévaudan. | The legend surrounding the attacks spawned a movie, '']'' released in 2001, which while based on the records of the creature also took the usual liberties to turn it into an entertaining story. Despite being an excellent movie that is credited with being the highest-grossing French film so far, it is not an accurate account of the occurances in Gévaudan. | ||
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Revision as of 04:47, 2 January 2005
The Beast of Gévaudan (French: Bête du Gévaudan) was a creature that terrorized the general area of the former province of Gévaudan, in today's Lozère département, in the Margeride Mountains in south-central France, in the general timeframe of 1764 to 1767.
The first attack that provided a description of the creature took place in June of 1764. A girl from Langogne was working a farm in the Forêt de Mercoire when she saw a large, wolflike animal charge from the trees in a straight line toward her. The farm's dogs retreated as the beast drew closer, until the bulls from the farm's herd of cattle menaced the creature enough to drive it back into the forest.
For the next three years attacks by the same beast occurred. It was described as being a wolflike creature the size of a cow with a wide chest, a long sinuous tail with a lionlike tuft of fur on the end, and a greyhoundlike head with large, protruding fangs. It was also noted making huge leaps approaching thirty feet. The attacks prompted Antoine de Beauterne, chief huntsman of King Louis XV, to visit the area, where he spent the next three years hunting wolves, believing them to be the real beast. The wolf killings lasted as long as the creature's attacks, over the general span of three years, and saw no affect on reports of the beast or its killing.
Of note is the fact that the creature had a strange method of killing, often ignoring the usual areas targetted by predators (legs and throat to incapacitate and kill, respectively) and going for the head, crushing it before feeding. It also seemed to have a taste for humans, as even when cattle and other farm animals were more easily attainable it often passed them completely to attack the person tending them. There were differing reports on the beast itself, which was sometimes reportedly seen with a man and was several times reported to be with another beast, and with young.
Various explanations were offered at the time of the attacks. They ranged from exaggerated accounts of wolf attacks, to a loup-garou (werewolf), all the way to the beast being a punishment from God to being an unholy creature summoned by a sorceror. Current opinions offer up the interesting theory that the attacks were actually a serial killer, or group of serial killers, using wolf attacks to cover their own murders. Despite the presence of Antoine de Beauterne, the killing of the creature that marked the end of the attacks is credited to a hermit, Jean Chastel, at the Sogne d'Aubert.
The legend surrounding the attacks spawned a movie, 'Le Pacte des Loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf)' released in 2001, which while based on the records of the creature also took the usual liberties to turn it into an entertaining story. Despite being an excellent movie that is credited with being the highest-grossing French film so far, it is not an accurate account of the occurances in Gévaudan.