For three years in the 1760s a wild-animal killer terrorised the Margeride, a high, thinly farmed upland in the south of the Massif Central. The story has been dressed up many times, with silver bullets, secret brotherhoods and monsters. This account keeps to what the records and modern historians support.
The Horror
The first declared victim was Jeanne Boulet, aged 14, killed near Les Hubacs, close to Langogne, on June 30, 1764. Her burial record suggests that she was the first victim to be officially attributed to the animal, not necessarily the first killed. The attacks are dated from that day to June 19, 1767, across an area of about 90 by 80 kilometres.
The count of the dead is not settled. A 1987 study estimated 210 attacks, 113 deaths and 49 injuries, with 98 victims partly eaten. Other sources put the deaths at between 60 and 100, and the injured at more than 30. Which number is right depends on what is counted as an attack by the same animal.
The crown sent hunters. Captain Duhamel led dragoons first. The d’Enneval father and son arrived in February 1765 with eight bloodhounds and were replaced in June 1765 by François Antoine, the king’s arquebus bearer. On August 11 that year Marie-Jeanne Vallet, later called the Maid of Gévaudan, was reported to have wounded the beast with a spear. On September 20 or 21, Antoine killed a large grey wolf, the Wolf of Chazes, which some survivors identified as the culprit. On October 19 he killed a female wolf and a pup near Chazes. The attacks are nonetheless recorded as running on until June 1767, which suggests that at least some of the killing was not the work of the wolves Antoine shot.
The end came on June 19, 1767. During a hunt organised by the Marquis d’Apcher, Jean Chastel shot an animal on the slopes of Mont Mouchet. It was examined at the Château de Besque in Charraix on June 19 and 20 by Dr Boulanger, a surgeon from Saugues, and the royal notary Roch Étienne Marin recorded the examination. The remains were incomplete, and the Marin Report gave 20 upper and 22 lower teeth, pointing to a canid. It was consistent with a large wolf or wolf-dog but did not prove an identity. The report was rediscovered in 1952 by the historian Élise Seguin. The animal was displayed for about 12 days. Chastel’s animal was reportedly taken to Paris by a servant named Gibert. The traditional story that it was buried at Versailles is questioned, and one account suggests a garden in the Rue de Seine.
Chastel’s reward was modest. The diocese granted him 72 livres on September 9, 1767.
The Legend
The best-known details are not documented. The story of silver bullets made from melted medals of the Virgin is a literary invention of the writer Henri Pourrat. The tale that Chastel was reading his Bible or praying before he fired comes from an oral tradition recorded in 1889 and is not supported by contemporary reports. Claims that the beast was a hyena, a lion or something supernatural are conjecture.
Historians such as Jay M. Smith, in Monsters of the Gévaudan (Harvard University Press, 2011), support the view that the deaths were more likely the work of individual wolves or packs. The identity of the animal Chastel shot is still unresolved.
The Modern Relic
Mont Mouchet stands at 1,497 metres on the border of the Cantal, Haute-Loire and Lozère départements. A stele honouring Chastel was erected in 1995 at La Besseyre-Saint-Mary. Antoine’s stuffed wolf was displayed at Versailles, and its later fate is not recorded.
